London robotics startup Humanoid raises $152M with Bosch manufacturing pact
The London-based robotics company has secured a billion-dollar valuation and a critical manufacturing partnership with Germany's Bosch, highlighting the intense European race to commercialise humanoid automation.
London robotics startup Humanoid has closed a $152 million Series A funding round, pushing its valuation past the $1 billion mark. The investment was led by Prime Movers Lab and included participation from Schaeffler, Aglaé Ventures, and Taiwan’s Fubon Financial. This brings the company's total capital raised to $270 million in less than two years.
More consequential than the capital injection is the accompanying manufacturing agreement with Robert Bosch Robotics. The German industrial subsidiary will act as the contract manufacturer for the wheeled robots, providing hardware design, supply chain expertise, and production capacity.
This partnership grants a startup with roughly 200 engineers immediate access to one of Europe’s largest manufacturing networks. Securing such industrial backing typically requires years of proven commercial traction, signalling deep institutional confidence in the region's ability to scale advanced hardware.
The company was founded in May 2024 by Artem Sokolov, who reportedly invested $30 million of his own capital after selling his family’s billion-dollar jewellery and retail business. Humanoid develops both wheeled and bipedal robots on its HMND 01 platform, which operates using a proprietary artificial intelligence system called KinetIQ.
Earlier this year, the wheeled model completed an eight-hour autonomous shift at a Siemens factory in Erlangen. During the trial, the machine handled 60 tote moves per hour with a pick-and-place success rate above 90 percent.
Humanoid claims to hold 34,000 robot pre-orders valued at nearly $2.5 billion, a figure that remains unverified but dwarfs the revenue of current hardware shippers. The startup attributes its rapid prototyping timelines to simulation-first development on Nvidia’s physical AI stack, with a beta version scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026.
The European robotics race
Humanoid’s claim to be Europe’s first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn faces immediate scrutiny from continental rivals. Germany’s Neura Robotics recently closed a funding round exceeding $1 billion at a reported $7 billion valuation, while Barcelona’s THEKER secured $85 million with backing from LVMH.
According to Goldman Sachs, the worldwide market for humanoid robots is expected to reach approximately $38 billion by 2035. Private-market valuations across the sector currently far exceed actual hardware revenue, leaving investors to bet that manufacturing partnerships like the one with Bosch will bridge the gap between pricing and delivery.
