Eka Robotics Closes $150 Million Series A Funding Round Led by a16z and F-Prime

According to TechCrunch, robotics startup Eka Robotics announced it has closed a $150 million Series A round, reaching a post-money valuation of $1.45 billion, co-led by a16z and F-Prime. The company was founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja. Eka has developed a manipulation architecture that combines force-sensitive grippers with a "vision-force-action" model, differing from the mainstream "vision-language-action" models. By leveraging physics simulators and large-scale reinforcement learning training, the model can generate thousands of hours of robotic experience in just minutes. According to the company, its robots can grasp approximately 1,500 objects weighing no more than 1 kilogram per hour (compared to about 600 for humans), with a success rate exceeding 95%. The gripper hardware costs less than $1,000, with a rated lifespan of 5 million cycles, aiming to meet the industry standard of 20 million cycles for industrial robotic arms.