For decades, software ate the world. Venture investors chased companies that could grow without factories, supply chains, or machines. Hardware was almost a dirty word. But now, Silicon Valley is getting physical. As the software boom cools and AI moves from chatbots into the physical world, investors are piling into robotics and so-called "physical AI," a term popularized by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to describe AI systems that can act in the real world. The pitch is that if AI transformed what happens on screens, robotics could transform work in warehouses, hospitals, construction sites, homes, and battlefields. Venture capital investment in global robotics and physical AI has grown from around $4 billion in 2019 to $26 billion in 2025, according to PitchBook data. This year, companies in the space have raised more than $23 billion. Several forces are driving the boom. Sensors, cameras, actuators, and other components have become cheaper and more capable. AI allows robots to move beyond rigid, preprogrammed behaviors. Talent from Tesla, Waymo, Amazon, and other hardware-building companies has learned how to deploy technology in the real world. And labor shortages and geopolitical pressure to rebuild supply chains have made automation more urgent. "Now the cool kids have arrived," said Matt Ocko, cofounder and managing partner at DCVC, a venture firm known for backing deep-tech companies. Ocko said he and fellow investor Steve Jurvetson, an early backer of SpaceX, coined the term "deep tech" decades ago to describe companies "delivering existentially necessary and valuable results in the physical world." The rush has also brought in investors with little experience in the category. Industry veterans say "hardware tourists" are flooding robotics cap tables, drawn in by hype and underestimating how hard it is to build machines that work reliably outside a demo. Business Insider identified 22 investors, from established names to rising stars, who are shaping the robotics boom. Their bets span humanoids, autonomous vehicles, warehouse automation, defense robotics, and the software models that could define the next generation of machines. The list is alphabetical. Aidan Madigan-Curtis, Eclipse Aidan Madigan-Curtis Eclipse Madigan-Curtis began her Silicon Valley career at Apple, where she worked on global operations for the first Apple Watch. She later joined Samsara as an early executive and led operations as the company scaled. When Eclipse approached her about investing, Madigan-Curtis saw an opportunity to back companies bringing technology into the physical world. "It felt to me like there was such a gap between the digital world and the real world we all live in — the one where we drive down roads and go to the doctor," Madigan-Curtis said. "I thought, when does technology start to penetrate the real world?" At Eclipse, Madigan-Curtis is part of a team of former operators investing in physical-world companies. She led the firm's investment in Verkada, which builds security cameras and software for businesses, and helped incubate Bedrock Robotics, a startup founded by former Waymo engineers that is automating heavy construction equipment. She also invested in Simbe Robotics, whose Tally robot scans store shelves to help retailers track inventory and pricing. "For a long time, the hardware was the hardest part about robotics," Madigan-Curtis said. "The real frontier now is the intelligence layer and building true embodied AI." Ajay Agarwal, Bain Capital Ventures Ajay Agarwal Bain Capital Ventures Agarwal spotted the promise of warehouse robots long before Amazon wanted in. In 2004, he backed Kiva Systems, which pioneered warehouse automation by using fleets of mobile robots to bring products directly to human workers. Agarwal led every successive funding round, and when Amazon bought Kiva in 2012 for $775 million, BCV was the company's only institutional investor. More recent bets include Vention, which lets manufacturers design and order custom factory equipment online; Gather AI, which uses autonomous drones to track inventory inside warehouses; and Mind Robotics, a Rivian spinout building AI-powered industrial robots. Agarwal is perhaps the most prominent robotics investor arguing against humanoids. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, he wrote that humanoids would prove to be a "parlor trick" with few practical uses. His portfolio reflects that thesis: Gather AI's drones fly through warehouses, and Mind Robotics is focused on automating factory tasks rather than building human-shaped machines. "There's a reason why humans fly planes and drive in cars," Agarwal said. "Because wheels and wings are more efficient than walking." Bilal Zuberi, Red Glass Ventures Bilal Zuberi Lumafield Zuberi began investing in deep tech nearly two decades ago, when a small cohort of investors, including him, realized most VCs were ignoring entire industries, including energy, defense, and 3D printing. "We realized there's a very big TAM [total addressable market] that Silicon Valley was just not addressing," Zuberi said. After more than a decade at Lux Capital, where he backed companies including Applied Intuition, which builds software for autonomous vehicles, and Saildrone, which makes autonomous ocean drones, Zuberi struck out on his own last year. Red Glass Ventures, named after Zuberi's signature glasses, is an early-stage fund where he works closely with founders and early teams. Zuberi's robotics investments include a foundation model startup, a robotics data training startup, and Foundry Robotics, his only public robotics investment so far. Foundry is developing robots to automate factory assembly. At the same time, Zuberi is wary of the hype around robotics. "My yellow flags are up. The space is overheated, overcrowded, and a bunch of noisy investments are being made. People will lose money. We are somewhere near the top of the hype curve," he said. Brian Zhan, Striker Venture Partners Brian Zhan Carla D.A. Zhan did robotics research in college but became frustrated with the field's slow pace. He shifted into database research and joined Facebook after graduating. He returned to robotics as an investor. "Everyone around me agrees that it's too late to start a company in coding. Robotics is going to be the next major category," Zhan said. Zhan practices what he describes as "nerdy investing." At CRV, he invested in Dyna Robotics, which is building foundation models for robots, and Skild AI, which is developing a general-purpose "brain" meant to work across different kinds of robots and tasks. On Skild, he missed the seed round, which went to his sister, Sequoia partner Stephanie Zhan, and Lightspeed's Raviraj Jain. He later joined the Series A. Zhan's investments reflect his belief that robotics is still in the stage where the basic building blocks are being created. Instead of every robotics company teaching its machines from scratch, he believes companies like Dyna and Skild will provide the AI models that many future robotics companies use to help their robots see, understand instructions, and decide how to move. Jeremy Levine and Talia Goldberg, Bessemer Venture Partners Jeremy Levine and Talia Goldberg Bessemer Venture Partners Levine and Goldberg are helping lead Bessemer's robotics and physical AI investment strategy. The two have argued that robotics is nearing its "GPT-2.5 moment": models are getting better, but the gap between demos and real-world deployment remains wide. The firm has backed a range of robotics companies, including Waymo, the autonomous-driving company; Mind Robotics, which is building factory robots; Foxglove, a robotics software company; Breaker, a defense robotics startup; DroneDeploy, which uses drones and cameras to map worksites; Auterion, which builds software for drones; and ANYbotics, which makes four-legged robots for industrial inspection. As their portfolio reflects, Levine and Goldberg are especially bullish on defense robotics, predicting the category will produce the first $50 billion-plus robotics IPOs. They reject the idea that robotics is in a bubble, arguing that too little capital is flowing into the sector given the size of the opportunity. "There will be 100,000x more robots on Earth in the next 10-20 years," Levine wrote in a recent Bessemer report. Joanna Lichter, Emerson Collective Joanna Lichter Barbara Kinney Lichter joined Emerson Collective in 2021 and leads the firm's physical AI investments. Her portfolio includes Field AI, a startup founded by former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers. It builds software to help robots move through challenging environments, such as construction sites, on their own. "Field combines three things we look for: a world-class technical team, a differentiated approach to a hard problem, and early evidence that the technology is working," Lichter said. Her other robotics bets include Physical Intelligence, which builds general-purpose AI models for robots, and Agrippa, which applies robotics to agriculture. For decades, Lichter argues, robots were too rigid to be broadly useful. Now, she sees signs that robots are beginning to handle new environments and tasks they weren't explicitly built for, though most of that progress remains in research labs. "The physical transformation is just getting started," Lichter said. "And the prize is vastly larger than most people realize." Kahini Shah, Obvious Ventures Kahini Shah Todd Tankersley Shah has been drawn to robotics since college, when she studied engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. At Obvious Ventures, Shah invests around a simple thesis: automate work that is dull, dirty, or dangerous. The firm has backed Dexterity, a warehouse robotics startup, and Pyka, which builds autonomous electric aircraft. Shah's focus is general-purpose robotics, and she's currently interested in dexterous manipulation, the challenge of teaching robots to use their hands with human-like skill. The "hands problem," as it is often called in robotics, remains one of the field's hardest bottlenecks. That led to her investment in Eka Robotics, cofounded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind robotics researcher Tuomas Haarnoja. "I was looking for a world-class research team that's also commercially-minded," Shah said. Shah said Eka's early demos, which show robot grippers nimbly clasping berries without squishing them and quickly screwing in lightbulbs, suggest its approach could help robots develop more capable hands over time. That could open the door to uses beyond factories and warehouses, including restaurants and homes. She has also written personal angel checks into Field AI and XDOF, which develops infrastructure for robotics data collection and training. Katherine Boyle, Andreessen Horowitz Katherine Boyle Kris Connor/Getty Images Boyle's robotics investments are rooted in Andreessen Horowitz's American Dynamism practice, which she cofounded. The strategy focuses on companies supporting the national interest across aerospace, defense, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure. Before joining Andreessen Horowitz, Boyle was a reporter at The Washington Post and later a partner at General Catalyst, where she invested early in Anduril, the defense tech startup building autonomous systems for the military. She joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2022. Her portfolio includes Hadrian, which automates precision manufacturing for aerospace and defense; Saronic, which builds autonomous ships for the military; and Castelion, a defense startup developing hypersonic weapons. Kelly Chen Kelly Chen Techarena Chen began her career on Wall Street. While running a mortgage-trading desk at Barclays, she started angel investing, including in an early satellite-constellation company. "I realized that I wanted to spend my career investing in this space," Chen said. She later joined DCVC, where she invested in Agility Robotics, the humanoid robot maker; Fulfil, which builds automated grocery-fulfillment systems; and Recycleye, a robotics company using AI to sort waste for recycling facilities. Chen then became a founding partner at the NATO Innovation Fund, a venture fund backed by 24 NATO allies that is investing more than $1 billion in deep tech. "My overall approach on the investing side has always been the same, which is how do we get to unit economics? What are the companies and industries where that is possible, or will soon be possible?" Chen said. Her focus has shifted as hardware, computing power, and simulation tools have improved. She is now launching a new fund backing physical AI companies that address the economy's hardest physical bottlenecks: supply chains, labor, industrial resilience, and critical infrastructure. Kevin Spain and Jake Saper, Emergence Capital Kevin Spain and Jake Saper Emergence Capital Before becoming a VC, Saper developed large solar projects in India. To get aerial images of remote sites in Rajasthan's Thar Desert, he once had to hire a hot-air balloonist to take photos. So when he later met DroneDeploy as a young investor, the use case was obvious. The company's software lets drones map and photograph sites for industries like construction, agriculture, and real estate. Emergence backed DroneDeploy in 2015, with Kevin Spain leading the deal. "Being a physical-world AI investor benefits a lot from having worked in the environments that you are funding," Saper said. A decade later, Saper and Spain co-led Emergence's investment in Bedrock Robotics, a startup founded by former Waymo engineers that's automating heavy construction equipment like excavators. The problem was familiar to Saper, who had seen how hard it can be to find skilled labor on construction sites. Spain has also backed Physical Intelligence, which is building general-purpose AI models for robots. "We believe that there are going to be foundation models that any robotics company can pick up and attach to their hardware to facilitate any kind of physical-world task, and Physical Intelligence is building that model," Spain said. Matt Ocko, DCVC Matt Ocko Winni Wintermeyer Photography Ocko is a self-described "stubborn nerd" who has spent the past 25 years backing deep tech companies: startups built on scientific breakthroughs and advanced engineering rather than software alone. On the day we spoke, the Trump administration awarded $2 billion in grants to nine quantum-computing companies, including $100 million each to DCVC-backed Atom Computing and Rigetti Computing. To Ocko, who founded DCVC in 2011, it was proof that deep tech bets can take years to mature, then become strategically essential and wildly lucrative. DCVC's robotics portfolio includes nearly two dozen companies, including Agility Robotics, which is building humanoid robots; and Recycleye, which uses AI to sort waste for recycling facilities.

Source: Business Insider

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