Robotics VC funding just hit an all time high and here are some of the companies that are set to benefit from this (Save…
Milk Road AI Twitter · Milk Road AI (@MilkRoadAI) · 2026-06-27
Robotics VC funding hit a record $16+ billion in Q1 2026 alone — more than the combined totals for 2021 and 2022 — as AI vision and language models gave robots the generalization capability needed to move beyond structured factory environments.
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Topics: roboticsventure-capitalhumanoid-robotsai-hardware
Claims
- Robotics VC deal activity surged to 500 deals and $16+ billion in Q1 2026, up from a flat range of $2–5B per quarter from 2021–2024.
- AI vision and language models enabled robots to generalize across variable environments, making the previously intractable hardware problem appear solvable.
- China accounts for roughly 31% of global robotics VC by dollar volume and is closing the gap with Western competitors rapidly.
- NVIDIA's Jetson and Thor chips power the AI inference layer of nearly every robot currently being built.
- Memory and compute — particularly fast, low-power DRAM — are the underappreciated 'picks and shovels' play in the humanoid robot supply chain.
Key quotes
Then in Q1 2026 it went nearly vertical, 500 deals in a single quarter and $16+ billion deployed, more than the entire year of 2021 and 2022 combined.
The moment vision models and language models became capable enough to generalize, the hardware problem suddenly looked solvable.
The picks and shovels play that most people miss is memory and compute.