Eka Robotics
MIT and ex-DeepMind founders' force-sensing robot manipulation model and gripper; valued at $1.45B
Scaleup · Pilot · Robot foundation model · Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States · Founded 2025 · ekarobotics.com
- Founded 2025 · year from secondary sources
- Founders Pulkit Agrawal, Tuomas Haarnoja · titles not published
- Customers · pilots not named
- Funding $150M · 2025 seed reported, not confirmed
- Headcount · not published
Profile
Eka Robotics builds robot manipulation around touch rather than vision alone. Its Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model combines what a robot sees with force feedback from Eka's own flexible, force-sensing hand, and its policies are trained by reinforcement learning in physics simulation instead of from human demonstrations or teleoperation. In lab tests it reports about 1,500 picks an hour of objects up to 1 kg, about two and a half times human speed, with more than 95% reliability (company figures). It is starting with pick-and-place and wire handling in undisclosed pilots with industrial customers. Co-founders Pulkit Agrawal, an MIT professor who runs the Improbable AI Lab, and Tuomas Haarnoja, co-creator of the Soft Actor-Critic reinforcement-learning algorithm and formerly of Google DeepMind, met as graduate students at UC Berkeley. In October 2026 it closed a $150M Series A co-led by a16z and F-Prime at a $1.45B post-money valuation.
Notes Customer pilots are not named. PitchBook and later press list an $11M seed closed on May 9, 2025; the company has not announced it, and reports of its investors differ. The founding year comes from the same secondary sources. The company has not published the founders' titles, so both are listed as co-founders.
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Leadership
- Pulkit Agrawal, Co-founder
- Tuomas Haarnoja, Co-founder
Flagship robots
- Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model AI model
Manipulation model that combines vision with force feedback from Eka's hand, trained by reinforcement learning in physics simulation rather than from human demonstrations - Eka gripper Dexterous hand
Force-sensing gripper designed together with the model; costs under $1,000 and is rated for 5 million duty cycles, per the company
Funding and valuation
Latest round
$150M
Series A · Oct 20, 2026
Led by a16z, F-Prime.
Amount and valuation per TechCrunch; a16z's own post confirms it led the Series A but gives no figures.
Total raised
about $150M Reported
As of Oct 20, 2026
Lower bound: the Series A alone. A reported $11M seed (May 2025) is not confirmed by the company, so it is not added.
Valuation
$1.45B
post-money (Series A) · Oct 20, 2026
Trademarks
1 name filed in the US since 2025 · last checked .
- EKA Approved for publicationComputer hardware for use in robots and robotics.
Source: USPTO Trademark Search, matched on the company’s legal names. Rechecked on the 1st and 15th of each month. A filing shows intent to use a name in the US, not a launched product.
Recent news
Sources
- Eka is worth $1.45B thanks to a physical AI model that has experts raving (TechCrunch) (Oct 20, 2026)
- Investing in Eka Robotics (Andreessen Horowitz) (Oct 20, 2026)
- This Company Is Building Superhuman Robot Manipulation (WIRED video) (Oct 20, 2026)
- Eka Robotics company website (Oct 20, 2026)
- Pulkit Agrawal (MIT CSAIL personal page; co-founder of Eka Robotics) (Oct 20, 2026)
- Eka Robotics company profile (PitchBook; $11M seed, May 9, 2025) (Oct 20, 2026)
Confidence: medium.