Thrun's Dulo reportedly raises USD 130m seed for AI that designs hardware
Dulo, the startup co-founded by Sebastian Thrun and Adrian Aoun to build foundation models for hardware design, raised USD 130m in seed funding, The Information reported on Oct 29. Investors named in reports include Eric Schmidt, John Doerr and Marc Benioff; no lead or valuation is known.
MEKAWIRE found no Form D as of Nov 1, and the company's own page gives no funding figure, so the amount stays unconfirmed. It would be the third-largest seed in our database since October 2025.
A startup with a one-line web page and no announced product has reportedly raised more in seed money than Foundry Robotics raised in its Series A. Dulo, co-founded by Sebastian Thrun and Adrian Aoun, has closed USD 130m in seed funding, The Information reported on Oct 29. MEKAWIRE could not confirm the figure from a company document.
The Information named Eric Schmidt, John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins as investors. TokenPost, citing an Oct 29 announcement by Aoun, listed Schmidt, Doerr, Marc Benioff, Yuri Milner, Ram Shriram, Construct Capital, Lowercarbon Capital, Bling Capital, BoxGroup, SV Angel, Haun Ventures and Scribble Ventures. Kleiner Perkins does not appear in that list, which is the one discrepancy between the two reports. Neither names a lead investor or a valuation.
What Dulo has said, and what it has not
Dulo's own page has three lines: manufacturing at lightspeed, foundation models for hardware design, and a team built by leaders from Waymo, Google Brain and Stanford's AI lab SAIL. It carries no funding figure. Thrun told the Actuate conference in August that the company was very small and in robotics, Business Insider reported. A MEKAWIRE search of SEC full-text filings on Nov 1 returned no Form D under the name Dulo. That does not disprove the round, because filings can lag or sit under another entity name, but the amount remains outlet-reported.
Reports say Dulo has not specified which hardware its models will target or when a product will arrive.
- Walden Robotics
- 300.0
- Jul 2026
- Company release
- General Intuition
- 133.7
- Oct 2025
- Outlet-reported
- Dulo
- 130.0
- Oct 2026
- Outlet-reported
- Dream Labs
- 90.0
- Oct 2026
- Company release
- Generative Bionics
- 81.0
- Dec 2025
- Company release
MEKAWIRE database, seed rounds only, disclosed or reported amounts, no estimates.
As of Nov 1, 2026
MEKAWIRE analysis
Dulo is a bet that the slowest step in physical AI is designing the machine, and at this size the money is pricing the founders rather than any evidence.
Most robot foundation-model capital goes to control, the layer Physical Intelligence sells. Dulo sits upstream, at the stage where parts and machines are specified. Our Oct 19 to 28 funding count shows how much capital is chasing physical AI. The counter-argument is that hardware design is constrained by testing and manufacturing feedback, which a model cannot skip.
The next signals are a Form D or a company statement confirming the amount, and a first named design partner.
- None found in SEC full-text search on Nov 1
- Amount unconfirmed by the company's own page
- Sebastian Thrun and Adrian Aoun
- Foundation models for hardware design
- USD 130m seed, The Information, Oct 29
- Eric Schmidt, John Doerr, Marc Benioff and others
- Not disclosed