UK Startup Humanoid Hits $1.35B on a $152M Series A
London-based robotics company Humanoid (the company, not this blog) announced on July 21 that it closed a $152 million Series A at a $1.35 billion post-money valuation. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, and Aglaé Ventures. Total capital raised to date: $270 million, about two years after founding.
What the Money Is For
Humanoid’s press release says the capital goes to:
- Next-generation humanoid platform development
- Commercial deployments with industrial customers, with beta robots starting in Q4 2026
- Mass manufacturing of wheel-based humanoid robots
- AI/software, including its proprietary stack called KinetIQ
Founder and CEO Artem Sokolov framed the round as turning robots from “breakthrough technology into everyday industrial tools.” Prime Movers Lab general partner Zia Huque said the firm expects the field to consolidate around a small set of category leaders across the US, Europe, and China — and that Humanoid is positioned as one of Europe’s.
Bosch Builds; Schaeffler Buys Capacity
This is where the story leaves pure venture theater.
Mathias Pillin, CTO of Robert Bosch GmbH, said Bosch’s subsidiary Robert Bosch Robotics GmbH will act as Humanoid’s contract manufacturing partner, also providing consulting on hardware design, production, and supply chain. That is a manufacturing network a two-year-old startup cannot fake.
Klaus Rosenfeld, CEO of Schaeffler AG, said Schaeffler is both a strategic investor and commercial partner. Humanoid’s release claims a commercial agreement with Schaeffler for large-scale deployment of thousands of humanoid robots in manufacturing environments — the kind of LOI/contract language that only becomes real when units hit the floor and stay there.
The company also lists partnerships with SAP, NVIDIA, Bosch, and Siemens. TNW reported that a wheeled HMND 01 platform completed an eight-hour autonomous shift at a Siemens factory in Erlangen earlier this year (company-reported performance on tote moves and pick success). TNW also noted aggressive pre-order claims that have not been independently verified — treat those as marketing until audited backlog shows up in financials.
Europe’s “First Pure-Play Unicorn” — With an Asterisk
Humanoid bills itself as Europe’s first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn. TNW flagged that other European robotics companies have also raised large rounds in 2026, so the branding fight is not settled. Globally, the company still sits behind better-capitalized US names on pure scale of funding and valuation.
For readers here: when we say “Humanoid raised $152M,” we mean the UK company at thehumanoid.ai — not a rebrand of this site.
A Human’s Take
A Series A with Bosch as contract manufacturer is a different animal than a lab demo with a celebrity investor on the deck. Factory partners force conversations about BOM cost, yield, service spares, and who shows up when a robot wedges a tote at 2 a.m. That pressure is healthy.
Still, $1.35 billion post-money before scaled commercial shipping is a bet on execution speed, not proof of product-market fit. Q4 2026 betas and wheeled mass manufacturing are the near-term checkpoints I care about. If those slip, the valuation story gets rewritten fast. If they land — with real hours on customer floors — Europe just put a serious industrial humanoid player on the board, and the US/China duopoly narrative gets less tidy.