{"slug": "dream-labs-raises-90m-and-launches-dream-api", "title": "Dream Labs raises $90M and launches Dream API", "summary": "Dream Labs raised $90 million in seed funding led by B Capital and Kindred Ventures and launched Dream API, a public interface that converts a robot's camera feed and plain-English instructions into motor commands for robots it has never seen before. The San Francisco startup said its Dream-1 flagship model, trained on video of people performing everyday tasks, controls any robot with grippers out of the box via zero-shot learning and transfers capabilities across hardware from more than 20 partners, with supported robots costing between about $2,000 and $10,000. \"The hardware is ready. What's been missing is a brain any robot can use,\" said Joel Jang, co-founder and CEO of Dream Labs.", "body_md": "# Dream Labs raises $90M and launches Dream API\n\n[The Robot Report](https://www.therobotreport.com)\n\nDream Labs says its Dream-1 AI model works across robots from different manufacturers and will allow robots to transfer their learning. The post Dream Labs raises $90M and launches Dream API appeared first on The Robot Report.\n\nMore brains are coming for robots. Dream Labs this week said it has raised $90 million in seed funding. The company also launched Dream API, a publicly available application programming interface to turn a robot’s camera feed and a plain-English instructions into motor commands, even for robots it has never seen before.\n\nFactories worldwide run a record 5 million industrial robots, yet nearly every one is programmed for a single task, and most cannot transfer what they have learned to other machines, noted Dream Labs. Low-cost robots now sell for a few thousand dollars but ship with no built-in intelligence. Teaching one robot one task can take specialists months, and a new task or new hardware often means starting from zero, according to the San Francisco startup.\n\nDream Labs said its Dream-1 flagship model works across robots from different manufacturers. Trained on video of people performing everyday tasks, it can predict what will happen next and determine the robot’s resulting action. Because it learns from video rather than from a single machine, its capabilities transfer across hardware, Dream Labs claimed.\n\nThe [company](https://dreamlabs.ai/#top) said Dream-1 can control any robot “out of the box” with [grippers](https://www.therobotreport.com/category/technologies/grippers-end-effectors/) and [zero-shot learning](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/zero-shot).\n\n“The hardware is ready. What’s been missing is a brain any robot can use,” stated Joel Jang, co-founder and CEO of Dream Labs. “When you get into a rental car, you don’t relearn how to drive. You find the controls, and your past driving experience does the rest.”\n\n“Dream-1 approaches a new robot the same way, so a new robot can do useful work in minutes, not months,” he added. “And instead of edited demos, we’re giving people a working model they can test themselves, mistakes included.”\n\nB Capital and Kindred Ventures led the round. It also included participation from A.Capital, Unusual Ventures, SV Angel, Wing VC, Scribble VC, and Adrian Aoun, among others.\n\n## Inside Dream Labs’ product portfolio\n\nDevelopers and robot enthusiasts can start using Dream Labs’ [AI](https://www.therobotreport.com/category/design-development/ai-cognition/) products today. The company said Dream API translates visual inputs and natural language prompts directly into robot actions.\n\nDevelopers can sign up, connect any robots with grippers, and the robot will carry out the task. Dream Labs runs its models in data centers around the world, so robots respond quickly wherever they are.\n\nThe company also offers [fine-tuning](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/fine-tuning) as a service. For unsupported hardware or new capabilities, developers and robot makers can submit a small batch of demonstration data to receive a tailored model within hours.\n\nDevelopers also have access to Dream Labs’ robot playground. Anyone with a browser can type commands to a robot in Dream Labs’ San Francisco office and watch it respond live and unedited, no robot purchase required.\n\n“A capable robot arm has gone from the price of a luxury car to the price of a high-end laptop. What it needs now is intelligence,” said Daisy Cai, general partner at B Capital. “This team did some of the defining work in robot learning at [NVIDIA](https://therobotreport.com/tag/nvidia). Now anyone with an API key can build on it.”\n\n## Startup works with more than 20 hardware partners\n\nDream Labs supports robots today that cost between about $2,000 and $10,000. Dream-1 needs no extra data to control a two-armed robot with parallel grippers.\n\nFor its over 20 hardware partners, Dream Labs said it goes beyond that baseline, refining the model for each robot so it performs at its best. Dream-1 currently handles tabletop tasks such as picking and placing objects and folding laundry, with support for wheeled [mobile robots](https://www.therobotreport.com/category/robots-platforms/amrs/) and dexterous hands to follow.\n\nThe company said it plans use the new funding primarily for [compute](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/compute) as it expands the tasks and robots Dream-1 can handle, and scales to support more users.\n\n“Our customers buy our robots to build things, and the hardest part has always been getting them to do actual work,” said Ryan Chan, co-founder and CEO of MakerMods, which sells $2,000 bimanual robot arms. “With Dream-1, our robot was up and running in a few minutes and attempting tasks we never programmed. We can focus on building better hardware, and our customers get intelligence that keeps improving.”\n\nThe post [Dream Labs raises $90M and launches Dream API](https://www.therobotreport.com/dream-labs-raises-90m-and-launches-dream-api/) appeared first on [The Robot Report](https://www.therobotreport.com).\n\nGet AI news in your inbox\n\nDaily digest of what matters in AI.\n\n## Key Terms Explained\n\n[Compute](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/compute)\n\nThe processing power needed to train and run AI models.\n\n[Fine-Tuning](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/fine-tuning)\n\nThe process of taking a pre-trained model and continuing to train it on a smaller, specific dataset to adapt it for a particular task or domain.\n\n[NVIDIA](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/nvidia)\n\nThe dominant provider of AI hardware.\n\n[Zero-Shot Learning](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/zero-shot)\n\nA model's ability to perform a task it was never explicitly trained on, with no examples provided.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dream-labs-raises-90m-and-launches-dream-api", "canonical_source": "https://www.machinebrief.com/news/dream-labs-raises-dollar90m-and-launches-dream-api-tzbm", "published_at": "2026-10-22 12:36:37+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-22 14:15:21.364331+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["robotics", "ai-startups", "artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "machine-learning"], "entities": ["Dream Labs", "Dream-1", "Dream API", "Joel Jang", "B Capital", "Kindred Ventures", "Daisy Cai", "NVIDIA"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dream-labs-raises-90m-and-launches-dream-api", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dream-labs-raises-90m-and-launches-dream-api.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dream-labs-raises-90m-and-launches-dream-api.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dream-labs-raises-90m-and-launches-dream-api.jsonld"}}