Genesis AI is in talks to raise about $500m for its robot brains

Genesis AI, a startup building foundation models for robots, is in talks to raise about $500 million at a pre-money valuation of roughly $3 billion, according to Bloomberg. The round, which could be led by Premji Invest with HSG and Northzone also weighing investment, would mark a steep markup from the company's $105 million seed round in July 2025. Genesis, which unveiled its wheeled robot Eno last month, aims to power a wide range of machines with its universal robotics model GENE-26.5.

Genesis AI, the startup building foundation models that it hopes will run inside a wide range of robots, is in talks to raise about $500m, according to Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-23/robotics-startup-genesis-in-talks-to-raise-about-500-million . A round of that size would value the company at roughly $3bn, capping a fast climb for a business that only came out of stealth last summer. Bloomberg reported the discussions on July 23, citing people familiar with the matter. The figures come with the usual caveats attached to private fundraising, where rounds move, shrink, and occasionally fall apart before anyone signs. The startup, which last month unveiled a wheeled robot called Eno https://thenextweb.com/news/genesis-ai-thinks-the-humanoid-hype-is-wrong-its-wheeled-robot-is-the-counterargument as its answer to humanoid hype, had not confirmed the raise at the time of writing. Reporting that followed put more shape on the deal. Premji Invest is said to be in discussions to lead the round, with HSG, formerly Sequoia China, and Northzone weighing further investment. The $3bn figure is described as a pre-money valuation. None of the firms has commented, and the line-up could still shift. What Genesis is selling is software rather than steel. Its universal robotics model, GENE-26.5, is meant to act as a shared brain across different machines, trained in part on synthetic data from an in-house physics engine the company says runs scenarios hundreds of thousands of times faster than real time. The pitch has landed at a moment when investors are pouring money into so-called physical AI, the same appetite that recently lifted NEURA Robotics https://thenextweb.com/news/neura-robotics-1-4b-series-c-physical-ai to a round of up to $1.4bn. Genesis has positioned itself against rivals such as Skild AI and Physical Intelligence partly on openness, saying it intends to open-source parts of its simulation stack. The approach is deliberately full-stack. Genesis designs both the model and the dexterous, human-like hands it runs on, aiming to close what it calls the “embodiment gap” between data gathered from human movement and the machines meant to reproduce it. A roughly $300 sensor glove, worn by workers to capture training data, sits at the centre of that plan. Should it close, the raise would slot Genesis into a run of outsized robotics cheques. London’s Humanoid https://thenextweb.com/news/humanoid-152m-series-a-robotics-unicorn-bosch banked a $152m Series A, and Standard Bots https://thenextweb.com/news/standard-bots-200m-1bn-valuation-us-robots reached a $1bn valuation on a $200m round. The wager across all of them is that general-purpose robots are the next frontier after chatbots, and backers are pricing the bet accordingly. Genesis emerged from stealth in July 2025 with a $105m seed round co-led by Eclipse Ventures and Khosla Ventures, among the larger seeds of that year. Backers included former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, French billionaire Xavier Niel, Bpifrance, and HSG, the same firm now said to be circling the new round. A $500m follow-on inside 12 months would mark a steep markup. The exact structure of the new round, including how much is primary capital and when it might close, has not been disclosed. The company was co-founded by Zhou Xian, a Carnegie Mellon robotics PhD who serves as chief executive, and Théophile Gervet, a former research scientist at Mistral AI. It keeps offices in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area, with a more recent push into London, and employs around 60 people split roughly evenly between Europe and the US. The startup should not be confused with the open-source Genesis physics-simulation project or the various other firms trading under the same name, a recurring hazard in a crowded robotics field. Genesis frames its target as the global market for physical labour, which it has valued at roughly $40 trillion, the kind of number that makes a $3bn valuation read as modest and a $500m round as a down payment. Whether the talks convert into a signed term sheet is a separate matter. For now the figure is a report, not a deal. Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.