Eka Robotics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup, has raised a $150M Series A to build robots that handle objects by touch as well as sight.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and F-Prime led the round, and Eka announced it on its blog on Tuesday. Reporting on the deal put the valuation at $1.45B post-money, meaning the figure includes the new cash.
The pitch is a response to a familiar weakness. Cameras let a robot find an object, but they say little about how firmly it is gripped or whether it is starting to slip. Humans handle that without thinking, and robots mostly do not. A machine that can feel what it holds could, in principle, take on fiddly jobs that today still go to people.
The size of the round is the other notable detail. A Series A is normally a company's first large institutional raise, and $150M at a $1.45B valuation is far above what that label usually implies. Investors are paying for a technical bet on dexterity, not for a track record.
The source material gives no product, customer, or revenue detail, so there is nothing yet to test the bet against. The open question is which tasks Eka wants its robots to own first, whether that is picking, assembly, or something else, and how soon it can show them doing it.