Luxembourg-based R3 Robotics has grabbed €20 million in fresh financing to industrialise automated disassembly of electrified systems. Backed by €14 million in Series A funding and €6 million in European public grants, the company is preparing for large-scale deployment as end-of-life EV components surge across global markets.
The funding round was co-led by HG Ventures and Suma Capital, with participation from Oetker Collection KG, the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund), and existing investors, including BONVENTURE, FlixFounders, and EIT Urban Mobility.
While the company hasn’t disclosed its valuation, it has raised a total of over €28.5 million in equity and grants.
A new identity for a larger mission
R3 Robotics was founded by Antoine Welter and Dr Xavier Kohll as Circu Li-ion in 2022. It has been rolling out its automated disassembly solution for lithium-ion batteries from micromobility service providers (e.g. e-bikes, e-scooters) since then, successfully recycling battery cells from those battery packs that can still be used.
Now, it has been rebranded R3 Robotics. The new name reflects its guiding principles: Repair, Reuse, Recycle, anchored in advanced robotics built for heavy-duty industrial settings.
Automation built for growing end-of-life volumes
Rapid electrification across mobility and energy sectors is creating an unprecedented wave of complex end-of-life components. Manual disassembly remains slow, costly, and hazardous, particularly when dealing with high-voltage systems.
R3 Robotics addresses these challenges with a platform engineered for continuous industrial operation. Its system blends computer vision, intelligent decision-making, and specialised robotic tools to dismantle lithium-ion battery packs, motors, and power electronics with precision. By drastically reducing human exposure to risk, the platform creates a safer and more scalable pathway for recycling industries.
Regulatory momentum further amplifies the need for such solutions. The Critical Raw Materials Act promotes stronger European supply chains, while the EU Battery Regulation mandates ambitious recycling and material recovery targets, including a 70% benchmark for lithium-ion batteries by 2030. Together with the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive, these policies are accelerating the shift toward automated, high-throughput recycling infrastructure.
What about diversity?
The company revealed to TFN, “R3 Robotics employs people from 16 different nationalities.”
Strategic partnerships
R3 Robotics works closely with Fortum Battery Recycling to deploy its technology at an industrial scale. In addition to recycling partners, the company collaborates directly with automotive manufacturers, processing end-of-life systems through centralised dismantling hubs to strengthen access to critical raw materials.
Its lighthouse facility in Karlsruhe, Germany, serves as a showcase for industrial performance and as a reference site for future deployments. Germany and France are viewed as core markets thanks to strong automotive ecosystems and advanced recycling networks.
In 2024, the company established a partnership with Amazon. In 2025, for the Eureka-funded Project LAMBDA, R3 Robotics joined forces with AICA and the Swiss Battery Technology Centre (SBTC) to teach an industrial Kuka robot how to perform this complex task with a human-like sense of touch.
R3 Robotics has also recently joined ReDriveS, a lighthouse project funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) in Germany, expanding automated disassembly capabilities to e-drives in partnership with Schaeffler, Volkswagen, and Bosch, amongst others.
What are the future plans?
R3 Robotics continues to position itself at the centre of the circular economy for electrified systems, combining industrial-scale robotics with the urgent global need to recover materials, reduce waste, and support sustainable manufacturing.
The company stated that the Series A financing and additional European grants will support the following:
- Technology and team expansion: Strategic hiring across engineering, AI, software, and operations
- European market scale-up: System deployments with industrial recyclers and automotive partners
- Facility scale-up: Increased capacity in Karlsruhe (Germany) and Luxembourg
- U.S. market entry: Commercial preparations and strategic partnerships for roll-out in 2026
“The bottleneck isn’t recycling technology; it’s clean feedstock, meaning getting complex electrified systems safely and cost-effectively dismantled at an industrial scale,” said Antoine Welter, CEO and co-founder of R3 Robotics.
“We’re building a dismantling platform that turns end-of-life systems into a strategic source of critical materials and reusable components for advanced industrial economies.” “R3 Robotics is addressing a critical industrial bottleneck in the supply of strategic raw materials,” said John Glushik at HG Ventures. “Scalable dismantling infrastructure is essential to strengthen resilience and secure access to critical inputs.”
“R3 Robotics combines strong industrial execution with a scalable approach to dismantling complex electrified systems,” said Natalia Ruiz, Partner at Suma Capital. “This capability is critical to unlocking materials and components at scale.”
“Automated disassembly at this level of complexity represents one of the toughest challenges in industrial robotics: managing variability, safety, and throughput simultaneously,” said Peter Mohnen, former CEO of KUKA and board member of R3 Robotics. “R3’s approach demonstrates the depth of automation expertise required to make this work at scale.”
