Eka Robotics valued at $1.45 billion after $150 million Series A led by a16z and F-Prime

Eka Robotics, founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja, emerged from stealth with a $150 million Series A round valuing the company at $1.45 billion post-money. The funding was led by a16z and F-Prime. The startup's manipulation architecture, featuring a force-sensitive gripper and a vision-force-action model, enables its robot to pick up objects with 95% reliability and adapt to new items without retraining. The robot demonstrates superhuman dexterity, handling 1,500 one-kilogram objects per hour, and exhibits a 'humanness' in its retry behavior when failing.