Zurich – mimic robotics AG has raised 2.5 million dollars in a financing round. The start-up will thus accelerate the development of a robot that can act with arms and hands that resemble human body parts.
mimic robotics AG, a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), receives 2.5 million dollars. According to an article on startupticker.ch, the Swiss-Luxembourg venture capital company Founderful participated in the financing round together with German (another.vc) and British (Tiny.vc) investors. The investment is intended to accelerate the development of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based robot that operates with human-like arms and hands. The mimic robotics team wants to launch the product on the market this year. The global market for human-like robots is expected to reach a total of 38 billion dollars by 2035, according to the article.
The mimic robot should be able to imitate work processes by observing human actions. According to the press release, this could alleviate the labor shortage prevalent in all branches of industry, especially for repetitive work that is difficult to automate. Mimic was founded in 2024 as an ETH spin-off. Its researchers Elvis Nava, Stefan Weirich, Stephan-Daniel Gravert and Benedek Forrai are convinced that their latest development of model-driven AI will revolutionize a large number of industries. They have created a basic model for robot manipulation that enables robots to understand the physical world and its interrelationships. This would enable robots to carry out tasks after only brief instructions. This would eliminate the need for expensive, complicated programming by engineers for each new task.
Most user cases are location-based and do not require a fully humanoid robot with legs, mimic co-founder Stephan-Daniel Gravert is quoted as saying. The start-up therefore concentrated on collecting data and inventive hardware for a universally applicable right-hand robot. There is already interest in the product from supermarkets, industrial bakeries and restaurants, among others. ce/js