Robotics company Eka Robotics completes $150 million Series A round at $1.45 billion valuation

October 21 — According to TechCrunch, robotics startup Eka Robotics has completed a $150 million Series A round at a post-money valuation of $1.45 billion, led by a16z and F-Prime. The company was founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja, and develops force-sensitive grippers and a "vision-force-action" model, relying primarily on physical simulation for reinforcement learning training. Eka says its robots can pick up roughly 1,500 items weighing under 1 kg per hour (humans manage about 600), with a success rate above 95%. The gripper costs under $1,000 and is rated for 5 million cycles. The company is piloting pick-and-place and cable handling operations with multiple industrial customers.