Standard Bots Co., a startup developing artificial intelligence-driven robotic arms for manufacturing and logistics, today announced it has raised $200 million in new funding.

RoboStrategy led the Series C funding round alongside existing investors, including General Catalyst, bringing the company’s valuation to $1 billion.

The company exists in a burgeoning industry called physical AI, which started out as a niche jargon word referring to the intersection between AI and the real world. Computers use sensors to detect changes in the environment and then activate actuators and robotics to take action in the physical world.

Standard Bots’ differentiation comes from driving the robotics accessibility layer. While legacy industrial robots require specialized integrators and weeks of programming, Standard Bots uses an Nvidia Corp. Isaac-powered physical AI stack that lets a factory worker teach the robot a new task through demonstration. The company claims this, combined with its vertically integrated design, delivers a 30% price advantage over incumbents.

That’s important because Nvidia provides software that allows companies to develop, simulate, and deploy physical AI and robotics. Standard Bots uses it to eschew programming and coding robots and instead trains robots by showing them how to operate by training them on tasks by demonstration. This greatly shortens their training by providing references in the way humans learn to work, essentially through apprenticeship.

“AI-native robots are the essential power tool of the 21st century — the tool that will grow American manufacturing and help every worker to be a force at work,” said co-founder, Chief Executive, Chief Engineer Evan Beard. “AI will allow industrial robots to do 100 times more tasks with full autonomy. You just show your robot how it’s done, and it learns through demonstration.”

Standard Bots makes AI-native robot arms and industrial humanoids that require no code to program. That makes them quick to deploy and requires nearly zero expertise. The applications are also numerous. They can be deployed across machining, welding, palletizing, grinding, fastening, dispensing, assembly, inspection and more.

The company said the price point is lower than legacy robotics because the company designs almost all its own parts, including its own actuators, and assembles its final products in-house. Soon, the company intends to bring everything in-house.

The fresh $200 million isn’t just going into research and development — it’s funding a physical manufacturing buildout. Standard Bots expanded its Glen Cove, NY facility from about 8,000 square feet to 16,000 square feet just last year; the Series C funds a further expansion to 70,000 square feet.

The company claimed it expects to be on pace to become one of the leading robotics companies in the U.S. by delivering 10% of new industrial robots next year. The company already boasts customers from numerous industries, including Sunoco LP, Lockheed Martin Corp., Amazon.com Inc., NASA and the U.S. Army.

The company’s stated goal by 2027 is full domestic vertical integration – or, in the company’s own words, “from metal in to robots out.” It’s positioning itself as one of the few industrial robot manufacturers building entirely on American soil at a time when the U.S. installed only one-ninth the industrial robots China did last year.

“Standard Bots is the furthest along in that regard with the most vertically integrated, onshore production process, and this new capital just accelerates all of that,” added Beard.

Photo: Standard Bots