A Jeff Bezos-led funding round has valued swiss robot maker Swiss-Mile at $100m.
The Amazon founder is backing a round of seed funding for the deep tech spin-off from ETH Zurich, which is set to raise around $20m.
Investors include Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Bezos Expeditions and HongShan, which was formerly Sequoia Capital China.
Swiss company Armada Investment, the sole European investor, and existing shareholder Linear Capital also took part in the funding, according to sources that have declined to be identified due to the financial information being private.
Swiss-Mile describes its work as collecting insights and easing labour by connecting AI with the physical world using autonomous machines.
The company website states: “Mobile robots have vast potential, but many lack the ability to effectively navigate obstacles, move over large distances, and carry significant loads.
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By GlobalData“Moreover, their reasoning capabilities often limit widespread adoption. Therefore, we introduce AI-driven wheeled-legged robots to bridge this gap.”
Incorporated in April 2023, the company says it aims to relieve humans of strenuous and tedious tasks.
The Zurich-based organisation developed the autonomous wheeled-legged Robotic Mule and Robotic Watchdog, which are specialised robots designed for carrying and monitoring.
Swiss-Mile’s robots work with neural networks, an AI-powered way of teaching computers to process data like the human brain.
Its prototypes can navigate city traffic, avoid obstacles and climb steps.
Bezos has been ramping up AI investment in recent months, including in humanoid-robot company Figure AI and search-engine company Perplexity AI.
Amazon also has bots from Agility Robotics in testing at one of its warehouses after backing the company in 2022.
The fundraising is one of several deals backed by large tech investors with OpenAI-backed Norwegian robotics start-up 1X Technologies AS raising $100m (Nkr1.05bn) this year.
Other robotic advancements include Vancouver-based Sanctuary AI developing a humanoid robot called Phoenix and Tesla’s Optimus robot, with Elon Musk calling it one of his most important projects.