Robotics VC funding hit an all time high and here are some of the companies that are set to benefit from this (Save this). From 2021 through 2024, robotics deal activity was flat, somewhere between $2–5 billion per quarter, deal count hovering around 200. Then in Q1 2026 it went nearly vertical, 500 deals in a single quarter and $16+ billion deployed, more than the entire year of 2021 and 2022 combined. The reason is AI got good enough to give robots a brain. For the past decade, robots were only useful in highly structured, repetitive environments because they couldn't handle variation. The moment vision models and language models became capable enough to generalize, the hardware problem suddenly looked solvable. On the private side, the biggest names are Figure AI ($2.4B raised, $39B valuation), Physical Intelligence (Google-backed, reportedly raising at $11B), Apptronik (backed by Google, Mercedes-Benz, John Deere, and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund), and NEURA Robotics in Germany (backed by SoftBank and Tether). China accounts for roughly 31% of global robotics VC by dollar volume and is closing the gap fast, with Galbot, LimX Dynamics, and dozens of others each raising hundreds of millions in early 2026 alone. For public market investors, the clearest ways to get exposure are. Nvidia, its Jetson and Thor chips power the AI inference layer of nearly every robot being built today, and it has made direct investments in Figure AI, Apptronik, and Skild AI. Tesla, deploying Optimus humanoids in its own factories today, with stated ambitions to produce millions of units annually. Hyundai / Boston Dynamics, Boston Dynamics is now a Hyundai subsidiary, and Atlas is being rolled out into industrial settings at scale. ABB, one of the largest legacy industrial robot manufacturers on earth, now integrating AI into an installed base of millions of machines. Fanuc, the other dominant industrial robotics incumbent, similarly adding AI capabilities to existing products used across automotive and electronics manufacturing. Intuitive Surgical, the dominant player in surgical robotics, compounding revenue at 15%+ annually, and increasingly using AI to improve its da Vinci systems. The picks and shovels play that most people miss is memory and compute. Humanoid robots running real time AI inference need fast, low power DRAM which brings it right back to Micron as well. Milk Road is tracking every layer of the humanoid robot supply chain, from the memory inside the brain to the gears inside the joints and the companies positioned to win before the mainstream catches on. Come join Milk Road Pro and get our full analysis every day using the link below!