London's Humanoid Hits Unicorn Status With $152 Million Series A for Industrial Robots

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-21

A London-based robotics company just became Europe's newest unicorn, and it's not your typical software startup. Humanoid, a company building humanoid robots for factories and warehouses, announced a $152 million Series A round at a $1.35 billion valuation. That's a lot of zeros. And it says something big about where the robotics industry is headed. ### The Details of the Deal The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from heavy hitters like Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, and Aglaé Ventures. This brings Humanoid's total funding to $270 million. Not bad for a company that was founded just two years ago in 2024. "In just two years, we've gone from an idea to becoming Europe's first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn," says Artem Sokolov, Founder and CEO of Humanoid. "What we've accomplished in such a short time would typically take a decade." ### Why This Matters for Industrial Automation Humanoid isn't building sci-fi robots for fun. Their wheeled robots are designed to solve real problems: labor shortages in manufacturing, logistics, and other critical sectors. The company's secret sauce is a vertically integrated approach. They combine proprietary robotics hardware with their own AI brain called KinetIQ. This system lets robots understand, reason, and execute complex physical tasks in real industrial environments. Think of it like this: instead of a robot that just follows pre-programmed paths, Humanoid's robots can actually think on their feet (or wheels). They can adapt to changing conditions on the factory floor. ### The Bigger Picture: Europe's Physical AI Boom Humanoid's raise is part of a massive wave of capital flowing into European physical AI and robotics this year. Here are some other notable rounds: - NEURA Robotics (Germany): up to $1.37 billion - Sereact (Stuttgart): $106 million - THEKER (Barcelona): $83 million - Encord (London): $57 million - Trener Robotics (Norway/US): $30 million - Dexory (UK): $11 million - Nomagic (Warsaw): $9.5 million - Allonic (Budapest): $6.8 million Combined with Humanoid's round, that's approximately $1.83 billion flowing into European robotics this year alone. "Humanoid robotics will be one of the defining technologies of the next decade," says Zia Huque, General Partner at Prime Movers Lab. "We expect the field to consolidate around a handful of category leaders across the US, Europe, and China." ### What Humanoid Will Do With the Money The company has big plans for its new capital. Here's what they're focusing on: - Developing and launching their next-generation humanoid robotics platform - Long-term commercial deployments at customer facilities across logistics, manufacturing, retail, and other sectors, starting with Beta version robots in Q4 2026 - Beginning mass manufacturing of their wheel-based humanoid robots - Advancing AI and software development, including their proprietary KinetIQ brain ### Key Partnerships Humanoid has already locked in major partnerships with Fortune 500 companies, including SAP, NVIDIA, Bosch, and Siemens. But the biggest deal so far is with Schaeffler: the industry's largest publicly announced commercial agreement for deploying thousands of humanoid robots in manufacturing environments. That's not a pilot program. That's a real commitment to scale. ### The Takeaway Europe is approaching a defining moment for its tech ecosystem. Until now, most of the physical AI momentum has been in the US and China. But with companies like Humanoid leading the charge, that's starting to change. If you're watching the robotics space, keep an eye on London. The next industrial revolution might just start there.