As ageing infrastructure, growing maintenance needs, and a shrinking skilled workforce challenge industrial sectors, Energy Robotics addresses these by automating inspection and monitoring through its AI-driven software platform.
Today, this Darmstadt-based AI software platform secured $13.5 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Blue Bear Capital and Climate Investment, with participating investors including Futury Capital, Hessen Capital, Kensho VC, and TADTech.
Founded in 2019 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Energy Robotics originated from the award-winning “Team Hector,” which won the international ARGOS Challenge for autonomous robots in oil and gas inspections.
The founding team includes CEO and co-founder Marc Dassler, along with Alberto Romay (COO and founder), Dorian Scholz, Oskar von Stryk, and Stefan Kohlbrecher, all experts with deep roots in autonomous robotics research and development.
“This funding round will help us scale autonomy to serve the world’s most critical infrastructure, giving energy, chemicals, utilities, and security operators greater resilience, safety, and efficiency,” said Marc Dassler, CEO and co-founder of Energy Robotics.
Meeting the growing demand for safer, smarter infrastructure
Dassler explained to TFN, “Due to demographic shift, many industries are facing a significant labour shortage. Energy Robotics’ platform automates these repetitive tasks, freeing skilled workers to focus on higher‑value activities. The company reports performing over one million autonomous inspections, saving customers more than 32,000 hours of human labour and enabling 30–40 % cost reductions.”
The company’s hardware-agnostic platform integrates with multiple robot platforms, including Boston Dynamics, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and DJI, and features a fleet orchestration system, Evergreen Digital Twins for real-time facility replicas, AI-powered analytics, simple large language model-driven mission control, and cybersecurity measures to ensure data sovereignty.
On the competition, Dassler added, “This holistic stack distinguishes Energy Robotics from competitors that offer only partial solutions or are tied to specific hardware. The company’s latest release highlights features such as an LLM‑driven mission control interface to easily prompt inspection missions, real‑world data and strong data‑privacy measures.”
Energy Robotics has completed over one million inspections on five continents, saving 32,000+ hours of hazardous human labour for major clients such as Shell, BP, Repsol, BASF, Merck, and E.ON.
What’s next?
Energy Robotics positions itself in a market with players in autonomous industrial inspection robotics, such as Nexxis, Percepto, Flyability, and others, leveraging a unique full-stack AI software approach over hardware-centric models.
Dr Carolin Funk, Partner, Blue Bear Capital. “Energy Robotics’ autonomous inspection
platform, powered by AI, directly addresses this need. It provides a scalable solution that
improves the safety and operational efficiency of key energy and industrial assets, while taking
advantage of the global robotics expansion.”
