Mind Robotics

Rivian chief executive RJ Scaringe said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Oct 13 that Doug Field has joined Mind Robotics, the industrial robotics company Rivian spun out about a year ago, as president running product, engineering and operations day to day, TechCrunch reported; no company press release was found. Field left Ford in April after about five years leading its EV and technology strategy, and earlier ran Apple's cancelled car project and Tesla's Model 3 engineering. Mind builds foundation-model-driven robots for factory work, uses Rivian as its first customer, and Rivian held about a third of it as of June 30 according to Rivian's quarterly filing. MEKAWIRE's database records $900 million across Mind's two disclosed 2026 rounds, a $500 million Series A in March and a $400 million Series A-1 in May.

Watney has raised an $80 million Series A co-led by the Valor Atreides AI Fund and Hummingbird Ventures, taking its total funding past $100 million. The San Francisco company runs dexterous robots for hyperscale cloud operators and claims better than 99.99% reliability over hundreds of thousands of operating hours, but it disclosed no customer names, valuation or founders.

Sunday, the Silicon Valley developer of the Memo household robot, said on 12 March 2026 that it had raised an oversubscribed $165 million Series B at a $1.15 billion valuation, led by Coatue, with Coatue's Thomas Laffont joining the board. The company trains Memo on data from people wearing its Skill Capture Glove instead of teleoperating robots, plans an invite-only home beta from the autumn and expects to ship at scale in 2027-2028.

Mind Robotics, the industrial AI robotics company founded and led by Rivian chief executive RJ Scaringe, said on March 11, 2026 that Accel and Andreessen Horowitz co-led a $500 million Series A, about four months after a $115 million seed. Rivian's filings show it deconsolidated the start-up in March, valued its remaining 37.6% at about $569 million using the Series A share price and recorded a $506 million gain, which by MEKAWIRE arithmetic implies an equity value near $1.51 billion.

The European Commission cleared SoftBank Group's purchase of ABB's robotics division, valued at USD 5.375 billion, under its simplified procedure on 11 March 2026. The price equals 17.2 times the division's 2024 EBITDA, while the floor valuation of Skild AI, whose round SoftBank led in January, is 2.6 times as high. Approvals in China and the United States remain, and both companies expect closing in mid-to-late 2026.

Palo Alto start-up Rhoda AI emerged on 10 March 2026 with a $450 million Series A from Khosla Ventures, Mayfield, Temasek and six other institutions, plus John Doerr. Its Direct Video Action model predicts video of a task and converts it into robot actions, and the company says new tasks can need as little as ten hours of teleoperation data. No lead investor, valuation or customer was disclosed.

Los Angeles-based Machina Labs closed a $124 million Series C on 4 February 2026 with Woven Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Balerion Space Ventures and the Strategic Development Fund. The money funds a 200,000-square-foot US factory for up to 50 RoboCraftsman cells making defense and aerospace structures. No lead investor or valuation was disclosed.

RobCo, which builds AI-driven industrial robots and leases them to manufacturers, raised $100 million in a Series C round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Lingotto Innovation on January 29, 2026. The Munich-founded company will use the money for its Physical AI roadmap, larger enterprise deployments and a bigger US presence, but disclosed no valuation or deployment figures.