Mimic raises USD $16 million to scale dexterous AI robotics
Swiss robotics startup mimic has raised USD $16 million in seed funding to expand the deployment of its physical AI for robots capable of complex and dexterous industrial tasks.
The Zurich-based company's funding round was led by Elaia and Speedinvest, with participation from Founderful, 1st kind, 10X Founders, 2100 Ventures, and Sequoia Scout Fund. This brings mimic's total funding to over USD $20 million, which will be used to accelerate the development of its foundation AI models and humanoid robotic hands for industrial use.
Challenges in automation
Across manufacturing and logistics, many intricate manual processes still depend on the skill and dexterity that only humans have been able to provide so far. While traditional industrial robots are effective at repetitive, pre-programmed tasks in carefully controlled environments, their limitations include the need for costly setup and custom programming for each new assignment. The global push for automation, reshoring production, and addressing labour shortages has increased interest in robots that can adapt to more dynamic tasks.
The recent surge of investment in humanoid robotics has predominantly taken place in the United States and China. However, the adoption of such robots in real-world industry has been slow due to factors including high costs, regulatory and safety concerns, and limited dexterity.
"Humanoids are exciting, but there aren't many industrial scenarios where the full-body form factor truly adds value," says Stephan-Daniel Gravert, Co-Founder and CPO at mimic. "Our approach pairs AI-driven dexterous robotic hands with proven, off-the-shelf robot arms to deliver the same capabilities in a way that is much simpler, more reliable and rapidly deployable."
Mimic's system revolves around its foundation AI models, which are trained on human demonstrations captured from operators on actual factory floors. These demonstrations use the company's proprietary data collection devices, gathering detailed movement data during normal production without disrupting day-to-day work. The resulting imitation learning allows mimic's robotic hands to replicate key human techniques and autonomously adapt to changing circumstances in their environment.
"Our general purpose AI models allow us to automate manual labour in a way that simply was not possible before," says Elvis Nava, co-founder and CTO at mimic. "Thanks to our unique focus on human-like dexterity and human data, we are competitive at the robot foundation model layer as well as the application layer."
Market outlook
Industrial economies are experiencing ongoing workforce pressures driven by ageing populations, rising operating costs, and efforts to reduce supply chain dependencies. Industry analysts estimate that the market for humanoid and dexterous robotics could reach USD $38 billion by 2035, with the wider robotics sector potentially valuation between USD $200 billion and USD $1 trillion by 2040.
Mimic's solutions are currently being piloted with several Fortune 500 manufacturers and global automotive companies. The company reports strong interest from logistics providers and other sectors that rely heavily on manual labour.
Founded in 2024 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich, mimic's team of 25 engineers, researchers, and operators has secured non-dilutive funding from the Swiss government's innovation agency and participated in the AWS Generative AI Accelerator programme.
"We're at an inflection point in robotics where learning-based systems meet real industrial needs," says Stefan Weirich, co-founder and CEO at mimic. "We make dexterity deployable at scale, closing the gap between what AI can do in the lab and what factories actually need. Europe has the talent, the infrastructure, and the demand, and we're building the company that brings all of this together."
Investor perspectives
Elaia, the lead investor, reaffirmed the challenges that mimic's technology aims to address. Clément Vanden Driessche, Partner at Elaia, said: "Elaia is thrilled to lead the seed round in mimic. The world-class team at mimic is addressing one of the most challenging problems in physical AI: dexterous manipulation. mimic's breakthrough approach integrates a proprietary robotic hand, state-of-the-art foundation models for robotics, and novel data acquisition and training methods."
Vincent Faber, Investment Manager at Elaia, added: "This enables autonomous, versatile manipulation and unlocks a previously untapped segment of the automation market, where the demand for flexible solutions continues to grow."
Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, General Partner at Speedinvest, commented: "At Speedinvest, we've always believed that Europe's strength lies in marrying world-class engineering with foundational research. With mimic, we see exactly that: a platform that unlocks human-level dexterity with frontier AI and solves billion-dollar problems on factory floors today. This is the moment Europe steps forward to compete and lead in the new era of AI and robotics"
