Physical AI Arrives: Why Investors Are Betting on the Automation Mandate

The era of robotics as a Jetson-era "futuristic novelty" is effectively over. For decades, industrial automation was limited to caged arms in automotive plants: expensive, dangerous, and inflexible. But in late 2025, a new mandate emerged for the tech sector: bringing the intelligence of Large Language Models (LLMs) into the physical world.

This shift isn't just about the buzzy demos at CES 2026. It is a response to a structural gap in the global labor market. With the U.S. manufacturing workforce stabilizing at roughly 12.7 million workers with ~4.2% of roles unfilled, the "Silver Tsunami" of retiring workers has exposed the fragility of human-centric supply chains. Today, investors are funding the private companies that promise to solve the labor crunch not with more people, but with "Physical AI": robots that can see, think, and act in unstructured environments.

The Appetite for Automation

2025 was a watershed year for embodied intelligence. Investors committed a staggering $40 billion to robotics startups, representing an over 70% increase in funding year-over-year. These investments accounted for 9% of overall venture funding in 2025.

This momentum culminated at CES 2026, where humanoids moved from stage demos to factory floors. Unlike previous years, the 2026 show focused heavily on industrial applications, with companies showcasing robots integrated into live logistics and manufacturing workflows rather than just waving at crowds.

While industrial and logistics robotics continue to anchor the sector, the investment landscape has matured. Deal counts are currently flat or declining, signaling a move away from broad experimentation and toward massive, later-stage funding rounds for proven winners. This trend is underpinned by notable market projections, with the global robotics industry expected to surge from $357 billion in 2025 to as much as $1.5 trillion by 2030¹.

While external funding data tells part of the story, proprietary activity on EquityZen’s platform reveals a dramatic shift in investor interest.

1. Robots on the Move

Robotics companies accounted for 40% of the companies that saw the biggest uptick in popularity² on EquityZen’s platform last year. This illustrates growing investor demand for tech that is moving to the physical world. Some of these companies include Skild AI, Gecko Robotics, and 1X.

2. Robotics Rises

Over the course of 2025, interest in Robotics companies grew markedly on EquityZen’s platform. While the industry saw the greatest surge in interest in the first quarter of 2025, interest held steady throughout the rest of the year. This was likely driven by notable funding rounds for Robotics companies throughout the year, including Apptronik, Gecko Robotics, Skild AI and Mytra.

Simultaneously, Robotics became a top 20 ranked industry in terms of investor popularity in 2025. In the first quarter of 2025 it ranked the 14th most popular industry and has since maintained its ranking³. This suggests that while Robotics companies have grown notably in popularity, the industry as a whole hasn’t reached the level of investor interest of industries like AI, fintech and defense tech.

Hard Tech Heroes: Top Private Robotics Companies to Watch

The data above is driven by a specific cohort of companies that are not just building hardware, but building the "brains" that allow robots to learn. Here is our list of top venture-backed robotics companies, ranked by EquityZen popularity score.

1. The Workforce Native: Apptronik

While some companies build robots to replace humans, Austin-based Apptronik builds them to work with humans. Following a massive $403 million Series A funding round that closed in early 2025, they have emerged as the leading contender for "collaborative" humanoids.

• EquityZen Popularity Score: 94

• The Angle: Apptronik's philosophy is unique: they view their robot, Apollo, as a hardware platform for third-party developers, much like a smartphone. By focusing on safety and approachability (Apollo is designed to be visually friendly and operates with force-control safety zones), they are betting that the winning robot will be the one workers trust enough to stand next to.

• Recent News: The company's landmark partnership with Mercedes-Benz has moved into a new phase as of early 2026. Apollo units are now active in pilot programs delivering assembly kits to human workers on the production line; a complex task requiring navigation through high-traffic areas that traditional "caged" robots cannot handle.

• The Generalist Trap: Apptronik is aiming for a "general purpose" robot that can do everything from crate lifting to elder care. This is a massive engineering challenge compared to specialized bots (like Agility's Digit). If they spread their R&D too thin across too many use cases, they risk not owning the market for any given use case.

2. The General Purpose Leader: Figure AI

Figure AI has become one of the buzziest names in the robotics industry. In late 2025, they shattered records by raising a Series C round that valued the company at $39 billion, cementing their status as a market leader.

• EquityZen Popularity Score: 90
• The Angle: Figure AI isn't just building a robot; they are building the network effect of data. By partnering with OpenAI to create the "Helix" model, every Figure AI robot learns from the collective experience of the entire fleet. This creates a "winner-take-most" dynamic similar to autonomous driving. The company with the most robots in the wild gathers the most data, making their robots smarter, which drives more sales.
• Recent News: Figure AI is using its new capital to scale "BotQ," a fully autonomous factory designed to manufacture humanoids at scale. Their "Helix" AI model allows their robots to learn tasks from visual data, a capability they are currently deploying with partners like BMW.
• Valuation Pressure: At $39B, Figure AI is priced for perfection. The company must transition from pilot programs to generating billions in revenue to justify this valuation. Additionally, hardware commoditization remains a threat if cheaper competitors can run similar AI models.

3. The Infrastructure Guardian: Gecko Robotics

Gecko Robotics has pivoted the robotics narrative from "replacing labor" to "saving assets." In June 2025, the company officially reached unicorn status with a $1.25 billion valuation following a Series D extension.

• EquityZen Popularity Score: 88
• The Angle: Gecko's wall-climbing robots don't walk, they crawl. According to Gecko, they adhere to dams, power plants, and naval vessels to perform ultrasonic inspections, detecting corrosion that human inspectors miss. This data feeds into their "Cantilever" software platform, creating digital twins of critical infrastructure.
• Recent News: In July 2025, Gecko expanded its partnership with the U.S. Navy and BPMI to accelerate production for the nuclear submarine program. By reducing inspection times from days to minutes, they have become an essential vendor for the U.S. defense industrial base.
• Government Reliance: A significant portion of Gecko’s recent growth is tied to large-scale government and defense contracts. While sticky, these contracts can be subject to political budget cycles and slow procurement processes.

4. The Consumer Bet: 1X

Backed by OpenAI, 1X (formerly Halodi Robotics) is placing its bet on the home market. In January 2026, they released their groundbreaking "World Model" update, allowing their androids to learn complex physical tasks simply by watching video demonstrations.

• EquityZen Popularity Score: 84
• The Angle: Unlike the clunky, loud robots of the past, 1X claims its NEO robot is designed to be soft, safe, and silent. It uses "tendon-driven" mechanics meant for the living room, not the factory floor.
• Recent News: Following the launch of NEO pre-orders in late 2025, 1X has begun shipping early units to beta users. The robot’s ability to plug itself in and handle delicate tasks like folding laundry has positioned it as the frontrunner for the personalized robotics market.
• Safety + Liability: Putting autonomous robots into unstructured homes with children and pets is the ultimate engineering challenge. A single high-profile safety incident could set the entire consumer robotics sector back by years.

5. The Universal Brain: Skild AI

Hardware is…hard, which is why Skild AI is building the software to power the robot market. In a bold move in early 2026, Skild raised $1.4 billion, tripling its valuation to $14 billion in just seven months.

• EquityZen Popularity Score: 65
• The Angle: Skild is betting that hardware will eventually become a commodity (e.g. cheap, interchangeable bodies). Their stated goal is to be the operating system that runs inside all of them. Their "Omni-bodied" model allows their software to control a quadruped dog, a wheeled rover, or a humanoid biped without any custom code.
• Recent News: The company’s massive Series C round was led by SoftBank and includes strategic backing from Jeff Bezos and NVIDIA. Skild reports that their revenue grew from zero to $30 million in just a few months during 2025, driven by deployments in security, construction, and data center inspection.
• Platform Dependency: As a software-first company, Skild relies on third-party hardware adoption. If major manufacturers like Tesla or Figure AI opt for vertical integration, keeping their "brains" and "bodies" proprietary, Skild’s addressable market could shrink.

6. The Warehouse Workhorse: Agility Robotics

While others focus on human-like hands, Agility Robotics focuses on logistics. Their robot, Digit, celebrated its one-year anniversary of full deployment at GXO Logistics in late 2025, moving over 100,000 actual totes in revenue-generating shifts.

• EquityZen Popularity Score: 64
• The Angle: Unlike competitors trying to redesign factories for robots, Agility designed Digit to work in "brownfield" sites, warehouses that already exist, with stairs, narrow aisles, and human workflows. This "drop-in" compatibility allows customers like GXO and Amazon to deploy automation today without spending millions retrofitting their facilities.
• Recent News: Agility has deepened its ties with Amazon, integrating Digit into fulfillment workflows where it handles repetitive lifting tasks. Unlike general-purpose bots, Digit aims to be purpose-built for warehouse spaces designed for people, not machines to reduce workforce injuries.
• Niche Ceiling: By focusing strictly on logistics, Agility risks being pigeonholed while "general purpose" humanoids expand into wider use cases. They must prove that specialization beats generalization in the long run.

The Investor Opportunity

The surge in robotics isn't just a hype cycle; it’s the physical manifestation of AI technology into the real world. Coupled with macro trends of shrinking workforces and localizing supply chains, many companies have no choice but to automate.

While LLMs handle our emails, Physical AI is coming for the factory floor. As these companies mature from R&D labs to commercial deployments, they aim to reshape the industrial economy. For private market investors, these companies offer a way to bet on the "application layer" of AI today.

To explore current opportunities in Robotics and Automation, visit the EquityZen Marketplace.