German robotics startup RobCo hits $1 billion valuation

German robotics startup RobCo hits $1 billion valuation

RobCo surpassed a $1 billion valuation on Monday through a secondary share sale that raised $40 million, with most of the stock sold by employees rather than the company itself, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The transaction doubles the valuation RobCo reached in January, when it closed a $100 million fundraising round that put it at roughly $500 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Among the new investors are Cherry Ventures and European Tech Collective, a fund backed by limited partners that include founders of Wiz — the cybersecurity firm Google bought for $32 billion — along with figures from payments company Adyen. Existing investors Sequoia, Lightspeed, Lingotto and others also participated, the company said.

"This is an important moment for RobCo, and I cannot think of a better way to mark it than by giving some of the people who built this company the opportunity to realize part of the value they created," said Roman Hölzl, co-founder and CEO of RobCo, in a statement.

Founded in Munich in 2020 by researchers from the Technical University of Munich, RobCo makes autonomous robots for factory floors. Its customers include BMW, and it has sold more than 1,000 robots to date, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company operates on a Robotics-as-a-Service model with no upfront investment required, the company said.

RobCo's marquee offering is Alfie, a two-armed robot the company describes as capable of handling unstructured factory tasks beyond the reach of conventional automation, with the ability to identify errors and course-correct on the fly. Unlike conventional industrial robots, which must be reprogrammed to switch tasks, Alfie's embedded AI allows it to adapt independently, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company plans to commercially launch Alfie at its first annual summit in Munich on March 4, 2027, the company said.

Hölzl made San Francisco his base earlier this year as he takes charge of the company's push into the U.S. market. RobCo now has operations across more than a dozen states, with manufacturing and assembly in Austin, Texas, and a lab in San Francisco, the company said.

"Alfie is our answer to automating the 80% to 90% of tasks that now require manual labor in manufacturing," Hölzl said.

The deal arrives as investment in robotics has accelerated. In the first half of 2026, PitchBook data cited by the outlet shows that robotics and physical AI startups pulled in $33.4 billion — a sum that already exceeds everything raised in all of 2025. RobCo is one of several European robotics companies attracting significant capital as investors bet on autonomous machines taking on physical work.