Enact Intelligence, a Swiss robotics startup, has come out of stealth with a $30 million pre-seed round. That is a large amount for a first round. The company wants to give robots a sense of touch so they can handle objects more accurately.
What Enact is building
Enact says it is building the basic technology for general purpose robots, meaning machines that are not made for just one task. Many robotics companies rely on cameras and visuals. Enact takes a different route. Its robots sense force and touch through their own actuators, the parts that make a robot move. CEO Manuel Yves Galliker says this lets robots feel what is happening in real time and learn from less data.
The company is aiming at industrial settings and the real world. It will use the money to grow its team and speed up hardware and research work.
Who is backing it
- Investors: Redalpine, Notion Capital and Firstminute Capital
- Angels: Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, Yann LeCun and Hugging Face's Thomas Wolf
- Galliker previously worked at US robotics startup Physical Intelligence
What is not known yet
The announcement does not say when a product will be available, what it will cost, or which companies will use it. It also gives no details on how well the robots perform. For now, this is a well-funded plan, not a finished product.
The takeawayEnact has $30 million to teach robots touch, but there is no product, price or customer list yet.