German robotics startup RobCo hits $1B valuation: WSJ

German robotics startup RobCo has sold shares in a deal that values the company at more than $1 billion—double the level hit earlier this year—highlighting investor enthusiasm for physical AI systems, the Wall Street Journal reported.

RobCo said it is selling $40M worth of shares—most of which are being sold by employees—to a group of new and existing investors. The sale follows a $100M fundraising in January that valued the business at roughly $500M, the report said.

Robotics and physical AI startups raised $33.4B in the first half of the year, more than in all of 2025, according to data provider PitchBook. New investors in RobCo include Cherry Ventures and European Tech Collective, a fund that counts founders from Wiz—the cybersecurity startup that Google acquired last year for $32 billion—and payments giant Adyen (ADYEY) among its limited partners.

Existing RobCo investors participating in the deal include venture-capital firms Sequoia and Lightspeed as well as Lingotto, a fund backed by the family behind Jeep owner Stellantis (STLA). Another is Leitmotif, an investment firm funded by Volkswagen (VWAGY), the report added.

RobCo was founded in 2020 by researchers from the Technical University of Munich, which is home to a robotics and machine intelligence institute. Since then, it has sold more than 1,000 robots to a range of industrial customers including German automaker BMW (BMWKY).

RobCo’s sales pitch is that its technology can help customers offset labor shortages, cut costs and expand output. Central to that effort is its new Alfie robot, which the company says can learn from its mistakes and correct them in real time.

“Alfie is our answer to automating the 80% to 90% of tasks that now require manual labor in manufacturing,” said Roman Hölzl, the startup’s co-founder and chief executive. Hölzl moved to San Francisco earlier this year to spearhead the company’s U.S. expansion.

Related humanoid robotics ETFs: Roundhill Humanoid Robotics ETF (HUMN), KraneShares Global Humanoid & Embodied Intelligence Index ETF (KOID), Themes Humanoid Robotics ETF (BOTT), Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ), and ROBO Global Robotics & Automation Index ETF (ROBO).