UK robot maker Humanoid raises $152 million, joins the unicorn ranks

Humanoid, a London-based builder of wheeled industrial robots, has raised $152 million in a Series A funding round. The two-year-old company is now valued at $1.35 billion. 

Forbes has labeled Humanoid Europe’s first robotics unicorn and the funding round lands just as investors begin to pour money into “physical AI.”

Who is buying Humanoid stocks? 

Humanoid has announced that it raised $152 million in a Series A funding round led by Prime Movers Lab. The company says the raise pushes its total funding to $270 million. Following the round, the company is now valued at $1.35 billion. 

Humanoid told reporters that it expects beta robots to be operational at customer sites in the fourth quarter of 2026, spread across the manufacturing, logistics, and retail industries. To achieve this goal, Bosch will act as contract manufacturer, handling parts sourcing and production.

Schaeffler, a German industrial supplier, has signed a separate agreement covering the planned rollout of thousands of robots inside its factories. Humanoid also lists SAP (ETR: SAP), NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), and Siemens (ETR: SIE) among its Fortune 500 partners.

The founder and CEO of Humanoid, Artem Sokolov, said in a statement that the funding provides the company with the resources to move even faster and to turn humanoid robots from “breakthrough technology into everyday industrial tools.”

Zia Huque, a general partner at Prime Movers Lab, said he expects the humanoid field to “consolidate around a handful of category leaders across the U.S., Europe, and China,” and stated that Humanoid would be one of them. 

The Hurun Research Institute counted 80 unicorns in the UK as of July 1, worth a combined £242.4 billion and ranking the country third globally behind the United States and China and Humanoid is now one of those companies. 

China minted 67 unicorns in the first half of 2026, according to Cryptopolitan’s previous reporting. Notably, the AI and robotics industries accounted for more than half of those unicorns.

What will Humanoid do with the money from its funding round? 

Humanoid’s newly raised funds will be used for several key projects, like developing its next-generation robot platform. The company also plans to start mass manufacturing its wheeled robots and intends to expand its AI software, specifically its proprietary AI system called KinetIQ.

KinetIQ is the part of Humanoid’s technology that lets the company’s robots understand and carry out physical tasks, essentially the brain. The system is designed to coordinate entire fleets of robots, even if the robots have different bodies and jobs.

Humanoid says it has also secured 34,000 robot pre-orders worth $2.4 billion and completed nine proof-of-concept projects with its wheeled robot, the HMND 01.

Humanoid is pitching its wheeled robots as an answer to labor shortages in factories and warehouses, where employers want steadier output and less employee turnover.

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