Persona AI

In the 30 days to October 14, 2026, MEKAWIRE verified 14 private robotics rounds with disclosed amounts worth $1,071.3 million. Compute chips took 51.3%, robot models 20.5% and data, perception and safety software 8.7%, while humanoid makers received $10 million, or 0.9%, against 13.4% between January and mid-September. The four October rounds, Mecka, Multiply Labs, SafeWorld and Minerva Humanoids, paid for what stands between a capable robot and a paid deployment, while humanoid makers raised through an IPO, a SPAC and a Form D offering.

Skild AI's $1.4 billion Series C, led by SoftBank, and Figure AI's $1 billion Series C, led by Parkway Venture Capital, are the two largest humanoid and embodied-AI rounds in MEKAWIRE's verified records since January 2025, and together make up 41% of the $5.86 billion disclosed across 22 rounds. Humanoid makers took 70% of disclosed money in 2025, but developers of robot foundation models have taken 71% in 2026 so far, and NVIDIA joined seven rounds without leading one.

The U.S. Army has named five winners of its xTechHumanoid competition after final demonstrations at Marine Corps Base Quantico, and only one of them, IHMC's Alex, is a complete humanoid robot. The other four supply power, touch sensing and command software, a mix that shows where the Army sees the bottlenecks in military humanoids.

Eni signed a memorandum of understanding with Genoa start-up Generative Bionics on 30 September 2026 to test the GENE.01 humanoid in inspection and remote assistance and to study producing, testing and recycling the robots' batteries at Eni sites. Chemicals arm Versalis and its subsidiary Finproject will work on the robot's feet, and Eni will assess opening its high-performance computing to Physical AI training. No financial terms were disclosed.

D-Robotics, the robot-chip business Horizon Robotics stopped consolidating in March, said on 17 September 2026 it had closed a US$400 million Series C without naming a single investor or a valuation. The company says it has shipped more than 8 million Sunrise chips and that its newest S600 part won more than 20 robot customers within six months, including UBTECH, Fourier and Booster Robotics.

Houston-based Persona AI disclosed in an SEC Form D filed on September 14, 2026 that it has sold $65,363,626 of a planned $141,964,814 private offering to 46 investors, with the first sale on August 28. The company, which builds humanoid robots for shipyard welding and other skilled trades and has a deployment agreement with HD Hyundai, raised $27 million in a pre-seed round in May 2025.

Agility Robotics, maker of the Digit humanoid, signed a definitive agreement on June 24, 2026 to merge with the blank-check company Churchill Capital Corp XI in a deal that values Agility at $2.5 billion before the money comes in. The transaction is expected to bring in more than $620 million of gross proceeds, including about $200 million from a PIPE led by Foxconn, and the combined company plans to trade on Nasdaq as AGLT.

Beijing embodied AI start-up Galbot completed a RMB 1.1 billion financing in June 2025 led by battery maker CATL and Puquan Capital, with China Development Bank's CDB Science and Technology Innovation, the Beijing Robotics Industry Fund and GGV Capital also investing, according to the Zhongguancun Science City administration. The deal took the company's funding over two years past RMB 2.4 billion and gave its synthetic data approach to robot learning a strategic industrial backer.