Apptronik expands its Series A to $935M

From a university lab to a company

Apptronik's humanoid work predates the company itself. It traces back to 2013, when members of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas competed in the NASA-DARPA Robotics Challenge with a robot called Valkyrie — three years before the company was formally founded. NASA has maintained a partnership with Apptronik since then.^[1]

That origin shapes how the company presents itself: a research lineage in legged and humanoid machines, later turned into a commercial product. Its robot, Apollo, is being built for work rather than demonstration — unloading trailers, picking warehouse inventory and tending machinery.^[1]

The round, reopened

On 11 February 2026, Apptronik said it had reopened its Series A to raise a total of $935 million for the round. TechCrunch separately learned that the company's post-money valuation is now about $5.3 billion.^[1]

The move was an extension of an extension. Apptronik had announced a $350 million Series A a year earlier, then expanded it to $415 million. The reopened round brought in another $520 million, with earlier investors Google, Mercedes-Benz and B Capital joined by new investors.^[1] The arithmetic is simple: $415 million plus $520 million equals the $935 million total.

A Series A is normally the first major venture round after seed funding, and companies usually move on to later rounds rather than reopening it. Reopening lets a company keep the same round's terms and paperwork while bringing in more capital and, often, more investors. Here the money came from a mix of existing backers and new ones.^[1]

Partners and the work

Apptronik has partnered with Google DeepMind, GXO and Mercedes-Benz on embodied AI — the field concerned with putting machine learning inside a physical body so that a robot can sense, plan and act in the world.^[1] The partners point to two sides of the business: AI research on one side, and logistics and manufacturing customers on the other. GXO is a logistics operator and Mercedes-Benz is an automaker; both run environments where repetitive material handling is common.

Apollo's three named tasks share a pattern. Unloading a trailer, picking inventory in a warehouse and tending a machine all take place in semi-structured spaces, involve moving objects, and are hard to automate with fixed machinery. A humanoid form — a robot with a torso, arms and legs — is one attempt to fit into spaces already built for people, rather than rebuilding the space around the robot.^[1]

What the round changes

The funding gives Apptronik capital at a valuation of about $5.3 billion, at a time when humanoid robots are being tested in warehouses and factories.^[1] The company's own history runs through that transition: from a university lab entry in a NASA-DARPA challenge, to a startup with a robot aimed at trailer unloading and machine tending.

Whether the money translates into deployed robots is a separate question. The facts of the round are clear: $935 million in total, a $5.3 billion post-money valuation, a reopened Series A, and a list of partners that includes Google DeepMind, GXO and Mercedes-Benz.^[1] What the company does with the capital, and how quickly Apollo moves from named tasks to routine work, will be the thing to watch.