California-based robotics startup FieldAI has raised $405 million across two consecutive rounds. Investors in these rounds include Bezos Expeditions, BHP Ventures, Canaan Partners, Emerson Collective, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Prysm, Temasek, and others. Previous investors include Gates Frontier and Samsung.
The latest round was oversubscribed, following rapid customer adoption and multiple expansion contracts for FieldAI’s general-purpose robotics intelligence, with successful testing and deployments across hundreds of complex real-world industrial environments.
The newly raised capital will accelerate FieldAI’s global expansion, support product development in areas such as locomotion and manipulation, and enable strategic hiring, with plans to double headcount by the end of the year. The funding also positions the company to scale production and deployment, meeting rising demand as industries increasingly embrace robotics for mission-critical operations.
Building AI systems integrated with physics
Unlike traditional AI systems that process text or images, embodied AI powers physical robots that interact with real-world environments. FieldAI has pioneered the development of Field Foundation Models (FFMs), a new class of physics-first foundation models built specifically for robotics. These models allow robots to quickly learn and adapt to new, unstructured environments while factoring in risk, safety, and physical constraints.
As per the founder and CEO Ali Agha, this physics-based layer is key to enabling robots to make informed, reliable decisions, especially in environments where errors can be dangerous. A small amount of hallucination might be acceptable in other AI applications, but not in scenarios where robots operate alongside humans or in hazardous environments. This is where FieldAI’s offerings are useful.
From breakthrough to broad deployment
FieldAI achieved a breakthrough that allowed a single software brain to operate across multiple robot types, performing both shared and specialised tasks. Since then, the company has secured contracts across industries, including construction, energy, manufacturing, urban delivery, and inspection, though it has not disclosed customer names.
FieldAI’s models are hardware-agnostic, meaning they can be deployed across various robotic platforms, from quadrupeds and humanoids to wheeled robots and passenger-scale vehicles, without requiring new programming for each application.
This versatility has fueled rapid global expansion, with FieldAI robots now active in Japan, Europe, and the United States, supporting some of the world’s largest industrial players.
Operational autonomy at the edge
FieldAI systems operate autonomously and in real time, with decisions made directly at the edge, enabling seamless integration into customer workflows. These deployments have generated unprecedented real-world data and operational hours, driving continuous improvement and evolution of the models. By providing cost-effective autonomy at scale, FieldAI is addressing urgent industry needs, from labour shortages to safety risks and efficiency goals.
Driving a new era in robotics
With its Field Foundation Models, FieldAI is charting a path toward general-purpose robotics, where a single, adaptable AI brain can manage multiple robot types safely and efficiently in diverse, unstructured environments. This approach is setting a new standard in industrial automation, enabling organisations worldwide to scale robotics with confidence and ushering in a transformative era of autonomy across industries.
The company continues to lead the charge in redefining autonomous operations for real-world robotics, leveraging its physics-first approach to deliver safe, scalable, and adaptable robotic intelligence on a global scale.
“Enabling autonomy solutions at scale is an extremely difficult problem, but the deep expertise of the FieldAI team and their unique approach to embodied intelligence reflects a pragmatic path forward,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “FieldAI is at the forefront of the general-purpose robotics revolution, and its ability to rapidly deploy will unlock long-term economic and societal value.”
“Our team has spent years in the field, driving major breakthroughs in ‘field robotics’ and safety-critical robotic AI in complex environments,” said Ali Agha, Founder and CEO of FieldAI. “With a deep understanding of the resilience and robustness required to deploy robotic AI in complex real-world conditions, we have taken a fundamentally different approach. Rather than attempting to shoehorn large language and vision models into robotics—only to address their hallucinations and limitations as an afterthought—we have designed intrinsically risk-aware architectures from the ground up. With Field Foundation Models, we are enabling robotic operations to scale seamlessly across diverse environments with varying risk profiles, moving beyond the constraints of traditional solutions.”
“We are excited and privileged to be partnering with the FieldAI team on this next phase of their journey. Their new class of foundation models offers the reliability and adaptability required for autonomous robotics deployment at scale across numerous sectors,” said Jay Park, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Prysm Capital. “FieldAI’s revolutionary models not only greatly broaden possible use cases but also enable risk-aware deployment, a critical element for scaling AI that has the potential to reshape how robots interact with the physical world.”
