# Who is paying for humanoids: 69 funding rounds

> Our funding record holds 69 entries. Take out the government funds, the acquisitions and the IPOs and $6.33 billion of disclosed private money remains. 37 percent of it went to companies with no robot on record.

Published: 2026-09-06
Section: Explainer
Author: Geert Jan van Vlastuin, Editor, humanoid.observer
Canonical: https://humanoid.observer/blog/who-is-paying-for-humanoids-69-funding-rounds/
Licence: editorial text all rights reserved. The underlying data is CC BY 4.0 at https://humanoid.observer/data/.
Cite as: humanoid.observer, https://humanoid.observer/blog/who-is-paying-for-humanoids-69-funding-rounds/, accessed <date>.

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Add up every amount in our funding record and you get $166.2 billion. That number is useless. $153.2 billion of it is three Chinese government funds, most of it one national fund-of-funds pledged over twenty years. Take those out, along with the acquisitions and the IPOs, and the private money that went into humanoid makers and their model suppliers is $6.33 billion across 35 disclosed rounds. Ten rounds are 70 percent of that.

## How $166 billion becomes $6.3 billion

The record has 69 entries. 42 carry an amount. Seven of the 42 distort the sum and we set them aside.

The largest is the National Development and Reform Commission's venture guidance fund of 6 March 2025, expected to mobilise about CNY 1 trillion, roughly $138 billion, over twenty years, naming embodied AI among several priorities. It invests in funds, not in humanoids. Beijing's CNY 100 billion fund (about $13.8 billion) covers robotics, AI and information industries together; Shenzhen's CNY 10 billion (about $1.38 billion) is an AI and robotics fund plus subsidies; Shanghai's entry has no size. Those four entries take $153.18 billion with them.

Seven entries are acquisitions, three with a price: [SoftBank](/companies/softbank-robotics/)'s $5.375 billion for ABB's robotics division in October 2025 (industrial arms, listed because the buyer also leads Skild AI), Hyundai's $880 million for 80 percent of [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) in 2020, and [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/)'s $293 million for 63.6 percent of the listed Swancor in July 2025, money leaving a maker to buy a listing. That is $6.548 billion out. [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/)'s Hong Kong listing of 29 December 2023 raised about $130 million; listings have [their own article](/blog/humanoid-robot-stocks-which-makers-are-listed/), so it goes too.

What remains is 56 entries, 35 with an amount, totalling $6,329,300,000, Sanctuary AI's $22 million Canadian grant included because it went straight to a company.

## 2025 was the year the money arrived

Of the 69 entries, 41 are dated 2025, 16 are 2024 and 6 are 2023. Before that: two in 2022, two in 2020, one in 2017, one in 2013, all Agility, Sanctuary or Boston Dynamics.

In the private set, 2025 has 32 entries, 18 of them with an amount, together $3.82 billion. 2024 has 16 entries, 9 disclosed, $2.11 billion. 2023 has five disclosed rounds worth $172.5 million and 2022 two worth $208.5 million. Roughly 94 percent of the disclosed private money landed in 2024 and 2025.

21 of the 56 private entries carry no amount, 14 of them from 2025. Five carry a valuation but no amount: [1X](/companies/1x/) at a reported $10 billion, [Skild AI](/companies/skild-ai/) at a reported $4 billion, AgiBot at $2.1 billion and earlier $980 million, [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) at about $1.7 billion. A valuation without an amount is a press number. It says what somebody agreed to call the company, not what it received.

The disclosed 2025 money is concentrated. Figure's $1 billion is 26 percent of the year. Add Physical Intelligence, Field AI, Agility and Apptronik and five rounds are 72 percent of it.

## The ten largest rounds

| # | Company | Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Lead investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) | 16 September 2025 | Series C | $1,000M | $39B post-money | Parkway Venture Capital |
| 2 | [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) | 29 February 2024 | Series B | $675M | $2.6B post-money | none named |
| 3 | [Physical Intelligence](/companies/physical-intelligence/) | November 2025 | Series B | $600M | $5.6B post-money | CapitalG |
| 4 | Field AI | August 2025 | Series A and B | $405M | $2B post-money | Bezos Expeditions, Prysm Capital, Temasek |
| 5 | [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) | April 2025 | Series C | $400M | $1.75B pre-money, reported | WP Global Partners |
| 6 | [Physical Intelligence](/companies/physical-intelligence/) | 4 November 2024 | Series A | $400M | $2.4B post-money | Jeff Bezos, Thrive Capital, Lux Capital |
| 7 | [Apptronik](/companies/apptronik/) | 13 February 2025 | Series A | $350M | not disclosed | B Capital, Capital Factory |
| 8 | [Skild AI](/companies/skild-ai/) | 9 July 2024 | Series A | $300M | $1.5B post-money | Lightspeed, Coatue, SoftBank Group, Bezos Expeditions |
| 9 | [Rainbow Robotics](/companies/rainbow-robotics/) | 31 December 2024 | strategic | $180M | not disclosed | Samsung Electronics |
| 10 | [Galbot](/companies/galbot/) | June 2025 | Series A++ | $153M | not disclosed | CATL, Puquan Capital |

These ten sum to $4.46 billion, 70.5 percent of the private total. The median disclosed private round is $105 million.

Figure's Series C is the one everybody quotes. Figure said the round was over $1 billion; Reuters put the post-money valuation at $39 billion, fifteen times the Series B a year and a half earlier. Across four rounds in our record Figure has raised $1.754 billion.

Apptronik's $350 million Series A of 13 February 2025 was the largest humanoid round of early 2025, led by B Capital and Capital Factory with Google participating. A $53 million extension in June took it to $403 million, to scale [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) production with Jabil.

Four of the ten rounds, $1.705 billion, went to companies that build models rather than bodies: Physical Intelligence twice, Field AI and Skild AI. Just below the table, [The Bot Company](/companies/the-bot-company/) has $300 million at a reported $4 billion valuation and no product shown.

## Who shows up most often

The 56 entries with an investor list name 144 distinct investors once obvious variants are merged (Nvidia and NVentures, three labels for Jeff Bezos, three Meituan vehicles). 111 appear exactly once.

| Investor | Entries | Led | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/) | 6 | 1 | Figure (2024, 2025), Physical Intelligence, Field AI, Skild AI, plus the Foxconn plant partnership |
| Jeff Bezos / Bezos Expeditions | 5 | 3 | Physical Intelligence (2024, 2025), Field AI, Skild AI, Figure |
| Khosla Ventures | 5 | 1 | Physical Intelligence (three rounds), Field AI, Genesis AI |
| SoftBank Group | 5 | 4 | Skild AI (2024, 2025), Boston Dynamics (bought 2017, sold 2020), ABB robotics |
| Beijing Robot Industry Fund | 4 | 0 | Unitree, Galbot (2024, 2025), RobotEra |
| Intel Capital | 4 | 1 | Figure (2023, 2024, 2025), Field AI |
| Lux Capital | 4 | 2 | Physical Intelligence (three rounds), Dyna Robotics |
| Meituan | 4 | 2 | Unitree (2024, 2025), Galbot (2024, 2025) |
| OpenAI / OpenAI Startup Fund | 4 | 1 | 1X (2023), Figure (2024), Physical Intelligence (2024, twice) |
| Sequoia Capital | 4 | 0 | Physical Intelligence (three rounds), Skild AI |

Nvidia is in four of the ten largest rounds. Bezos is in five. The American names in this table back, between them, Figure, 1X, Physical Intelligence, Field AI, Skild AI, Genesis AI and Dyna Robotics; five of those seven have no robot in our database and sell models to the makers that do.

The Chinese side clusters in Unitree, Galbot, LimX and EngineAI, and mostly does not disclose. Of the private money to companies with a country on record, $4.52 billion across 17 rounds is American and $598 million across six rounds is Chinese. Unitree's Series C, led by China Mobile, Tencent, Alibaba and Geely, surfaced through registry changes with no amount. Part of why [China builds and America demos](/blog/china-builds-america-demos/) is a reporting artefact.

## Money raised against machines you can buy

The 69 entries name 42 recipients; four are governments, leaving 38 companies. Eleven of the 38 have no robot in our database: Physical Intelligence, Skild AI, Field AI, The Bot Company, Dyna Robotics, Genesis AI and five smaller names. Eight of the eleven have a disclosed amount, together $2.37 billion, 37.5 percent of the private total.

Twelve of the 38 have a machine with a buy record that is not marked "not for sale": Unitree, 1X, AgiBot, RobotEra, Hugging Face, Agility, EngineAI, Fourier, Booster, LimX, UBTech and K-Scale. [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/), [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) and the [electric Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/) have buy entries marked not for sale. By the site's stricter test, in stock or preorder as in [the 44](/blog/44-you-can-order-138-you-cannot/), 15 of the 38 have an orderable machine and 23 have none.

Split the money that way. $1.04 billion across nine disclosed rounds went to makers with a buy record: Unitree, 1X, [Fourier](/companies/fourier/), Agility, [RobotEra](/companies/robotera/) and [EngineAI](/companies/engineai/). $5.29 billion across 26 rounds went to companies you cannot buy from. That is 84 percent.

Deployments are wider: 17 of the 38 have at least one entry in our [52 deployments](/blog/where-humanoids-actually-work-52-deployments/), 21 have none. Of the ten largest raisers by total, six have none.

## Units delivered: the field is empty

Our robots table has a field called `units_deployed_est`. It is null on all 182 machines. The deployments table is only a little better: 6 of 52 entries give a unit count, and they sum to 41 robots.

Twenty of the 41 are [Walker S](/robots/ubtech-walker-s/) units in an order Dongfeng Liuzhou announced in February 2024, status pilot. Sixteen are [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/)s that danced at the CCTV gala on 28 January 2025, for one night. Two are the first production [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/)s Ford took in 2020, since retired. The last three are an Optimus at the Tesla Diner, [Phoenix](/robots/sanctuary-phoenix/) doing a week at Mark's under teleoperation, and Robonaut 2.

Set that against the money. The five largest raisers, Figure, Physical Intelligence, Agility, Field AI and Apptronik, took $4.2 billion, two thirds of the private total. Their counted units in this record: two, Ford's Digits. UBTech and Unitree own 36 of the 41 counted units and have $270 million of disclosed money between them, UBTech's $130 million listing and Unitree's $140 million Series B.

Figure is the sharpest case. $1.754 billion raised, three deployments, no unit count in any of them. [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) loaded sheet metal at BMW Spartanburg from August 2024 to November 2025, autonomous according to Figure, fleet size not published. A logistics pilot has no named customer; the home alpha does not say how many homes. Figure 03 is not for sale, and BotQ is designed for 12,000 units a year. Apollo has three pilots, at Mercedes-Benz, GXO and Jabil, none with a number, and its teleoperation field says partial.

## What to read in a maker's funding record

A round is a bet by people who expect a return, and this record shows the bets bunching around the same names. Read it for five things. Whether there is an amount, or only a valuation; five entries here have the second without the first. Who led, and whether they have led before: Parkway has led Figure three times, Thrive and Lux have backed Physical Intelligence three times, and CapitalG, Samsung or CATL leading is a strategic buyer choosing a supplier. Whether the recipient builds bodies at all; $2.37 billion here went to model companies, and a model does not arrive on a pallet. Whether the maker has a buy record and a deployment with a unit number. And for Chinese makers, whether anything is disclosed; if not, count named customers, as UBTech's list of BYD, Foxconn, Zeekr and Dongfeng lets you do.

If you are choosing a maker for a pilot, weight a $100 million round less than one named customer with a published fleet size. This record has six deployments with a count. The five biggest raisers own one of them, and it is two robots from 2020 that have since been retired.

## Sources

- [Figure AI valued at $39 billion in latest funding round](https://www.reuters.com/business/figure-ai-valued-39-billion-latest-funding-round-2025-09-16/), Reuters
- [Robotics startup Figure raises $675 mln from Microsoft, Nvidia, other big techs](https://www.reuters.com/technology/robotics-startup-figure-raises-675-mln-microsoft-nvidia-other-big-techs-2024-02-29/), Reuters
- [Apptronik newsroom](https://apptronik.com/news), Apptronik
- [Physical Intelligence](https://www.physicalintelligence.company), Physical Intelligence
- [Agility Robotics newsroom](https://www.agilityrobotics.com/newsroom), Agility Robotics
- [Skild AI](https://www.skild.ai), Skild AI
- [Unitree news](https://www.unitree.com/news), Unitree
- [UBTech Robotics](https://www.ubtrobot.com), UBTech