Mind Robotics, a Palo Alto company that builds AI-driven robots for factories, said on 11 March 2026 that it had raised $500m in a Series A round co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.
The company said the round was expected to close later in March. It did not disclose a valuation. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal, put the valuation at about $2bn, according to TechCrunch.
Sameer Gandhi, a partner at Accel, will join the board. No other investors in the round were named.
“Advanced robotics are going to be critical for global competitiveness, as well as addressing the substantial industrial labor shortages that exist today. We’re building robots that will perform real tasks, in real plants, at real scale.”RJ Scaringe, Founder, Mind Robotics
What Mind Robotics does
Mind Robotics was founded in 2025 by RJ Scaringe, the founder and chief executive of the electric-vehicle maker Rivian. TechCrunch reported that it was spun out of Rivian in November 2025 and that Scaringe serves as chairman.
The company is building a full stack for industrial automation: foundation models, purpose-built robots and the infrastructure to deploy them. It argues that conventional industrial robots handle repeatable, dimensionally stable tasks well, but that much of the value-adding work in a factory still needs human dexterity, adaptation and physical reasoning that classical robotics cannot provide.
Rivian is a partner and major shareholder. It supplies a large stream of production data for training the models and a working manufacturing site where the robots can first be put to use, along with its electro-mechanical engineering know-how. Scaringe told The Wall Street Journal that the company is focused on practical industrial machines, saying that "doing cartwheels does not create value in manufacturing", TechCrunch reported.
Who invested
Accel and a16z led the Series A. Gandhi said the team had helped build one of the most ambitious manufacturing operations in the electric-vehicle industry and described Scaringe as a disciplined leader.
Sarah Wang, a general partner at a16z, pointed to Scaringe's record at Rivian, where she said he designed the vehicle architecture, electronics, battery systems, embedded software, manufacturing processes and supply chains as one integrated system. She said that kind of experience was what it would take to build a large robotics company.
The round follows a $115m seed financing that Eclipse led in late 2025. TechCrunch reported that the two rounds bring Mind Robotics' total funding to $615m in the few months since it was founded.
What the money is for
Mind Robotics said it would use the funding to build and deploy AI-enabled robotic systems at industrial scale. It did not give a breakdown of spending, and it did not disclose how many people it employs, saying only that its team is growing quickly and spans AI, robotics and industrial manufacturing.
Scaringe said he expected the industrial sector to be the largest large-scale use of advanced robotics as AI moves into the physical world, and that such robots would matter for global competitiveness and for filling labour shortages in industry.
Company website: mindrobotics.com