NEURA Robotics
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| NEURA Robotics | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Full name | NEURA Robotics GmbH |
| Founded | 26 March 2019 (as Han's Robot Germany GmbH) |
| Founder & CEO | David Reger |
| Headquarters | Gutenbergstrasse 44, Metzingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany |
| Industry | Robotics, Humanoid robots, Embodied AI |
| Products | MAiRA, LARA, MAV, MiPA, 4NE-1, Neuraverse |
| Total funding | Up to ~$1.4 billion Series C announced June 2026; ~$1.65 billion raised across all rounds |
| Reported valuation | ~$7 billion (June 2026, Bloomberg / Handelsblatt) |
| Employees | 1,100+ (late Oct 2025, after the ek robotics acquisition) |
| Order book | Exceeds $1 billion (orders plus deployment pipeline) |
| Production target | Multi-million robots per year by 2030 |
| Website | neura-robotics.com |
NEURA Robotics is a German robotics company that builds cognitive robots: machines that fuse industrial-grade hardware with onboard artificial intelligence so they perceive their surroundings, learn new tasks, and work safely alongside people without safety cages. Founded in 2019 by David Reger in Metzingen, Baden-Wurttemberg (about 30 km south of Stuttgart), NEURA designs the sensors, joints, controllers, and AI together rather than bolting software onto generic arms. Its lineup spans the MAiRA cognitive cobot family, the LARA lightweight cobot, the MAV mobile platform, the MiPA cognitive service robot, and the 4NE-1 humanoid robot, all running one software stack and a shared skills marketplace called the Neuraverse. NEURA markets the 4NE-1 as Europe's leading humanoid and the first humanoid designed for series production by a Western manufacturer.[1][2][3]
On 10 June 2026 NEURA announced a Series C of up to $1.4 billion, led by stablecoin issuer Tether and joined by NVIDIA, Amazon, Qualcomm, Bosch, Schaeffler, the European Investment Bank, imec.xpand, Lingotto Horizon, and InterAlpen Partners. The company called it the largest funding round ever raised by a full-stack robotics company; Bloomberg reported a valuation of roughly $7 billion, making NEURA Europe's most heavily funded humanoid-robotics maker. "Many believed globally relevant AI infrastructure companies could only emerge from Silicon Valley," CEO David Reger said. "With this financing, NEURA is firmly among the global leaders in the robotics race."[6][7][13][27]
David Reger registered the company in Metzingen on 26 March 2019, originally as Han's Robot Germany GmbH, the European arm of Chinese robot maker Han's Robot. Reger, who had previously built up the robotics division of the Swiss firm Mabi AG, used the GmbH to rethink the cobot category around cognitive robotics: hardware with sensing, planning, and learning baked in rather than added as a software layer. The company was renamed NEURA Robotics in November 2020 and began launching its own products. Reger was later named Innovator of the Year in Germany and won the special Innovator of the Year prize at the German Innovation Award 2025.[1][2][3][8]
NEURA introduced LARA (Lightweight Agile Robotic Assistant) in November 2020, a low-cost collaborative arm. Through 2021 and 2022 it built the MAV mobile robot, capable of carrying up to 1.5 tons for automotive and logistics. In 2021 the company launched MAiRA and raised about $86 million.[2][9]
MAiRA was marketed as the world's first commercially available cognitive robot. It fuses 3D vision, force sensors, microphones, and onboard AI so operators can program tasks by demonstration or speech. The MAiRA Pro range ships in three sizes (S, M, L) with payloads from 5 to 25 kg, built in Germany under a TUV-certified safety architecture up to PL e / SIL 3.[10][11]
In July 2023 NEURA raised a $55 million Series A; an extension added $16 million in late 2023 from InterAlpen Partners (USA). It moved production from China to Germany in February 2024 and announced the Omron Robotics partnership in April 2024 for OMRON-branded iCR cobots based on MAiRA.[4][12]
On 14 January 2025 NEURA announced a EUR 120 million Series B led by Lingotto Investment Management, the investment arm of Exor (the Agnelli family holding). Other investors included BlueCrest Capital, Volvo Cars Tech Fund, InterAlpen Partners, Vsquared Ventures, HV Capital, Delta Electronics, C4 Ventures, L-Bank, and Reger himself. NEURA said it had doubled headcount to over 300 employees, grown revenue tenfold, and built an order book around EUR 1 billion.[4][5]
On 2 October 2025 NEURA acquired ek robotics, a 60-year-old German maker of driverless transport systems (AGVs and AMRs) that had entered self-administered insolvency. The deal added about 300 employees across five locations and roughly EUR 60 million in fiscal-2024 revenue, and the unit was renamed Neura Mobile Robotics GmbH while keeping the ek robotics brand. By late October 2025 NEURA reported more than 1,100 employees, up from over 300 at the start of the year.[28]
Reports of a Tether-led round circulated from November 2025, when figures of $9 to $12 billion were floated. On 10 June 2026 NEURA formally announced a Series C of up to $1.4 billion to "accelerate the world's leading Physical AI platform." The round was led by Tether and joined by NVIDIA, Amazon, Qualcomm, Bosch, Schaeffler, the European Investment Bank, imec.xpand, Lingotto Horizon, and InterAlpen Partners. The full amount is tied to performance milestones. Bloomberg and Handelsblatt put the valuation at about $7 billion; earlier Bloomberg reporting in March 2026 had cited a figure near EUR 4 billion. The European Investment Bank's participation signalled that European institutions view NEURA as a strategic asset in a sector dominated by the United States and China.[6][7][13][27]
In October 2025 NEURA opened a hub in Hangzhou, China, including the first NEURAGym in Asia, and signed partnerships with Alibaba Cloud and other Chinese firms. Zurich and Munich offices grew through 2025 and 2026. CES 2026 served as the public stage for the next-generation 4NE-1, the 4NE-1 Mini, and a new Quadruped robot, with Spencer Huang from NVIDIA and David Kehr from Schaeffler joining Reger.[14][23]
NEURA describes its portfolio as a one-device approach: industrial and household robots share one software stack and learn collectively through the Neuraverse.
| Product | Type | Payload / size | Primary use |
|---|---|---|---|
| MAiRA Pro S / M / L | Cognitive cobot, 7 axes | 5 to 25 kg, 850 to 1,800 mm reach | Welding, assembly, grinding, inspection, medical |
| LARA | Lightweight cobot | 3 to 12 kg payload | Repetitive tasks, machine tending |
| MAV | Autonomous mobile platform | Up to 1.5 t | Material transport in automotive and logistics |
| MiPA | Service / household robot | Two-armed mobile manipulator | Vacuuming, dishwasher unloading, eldercare |
| 4NE-1 | Bipedal humanoid | 1.8 m, 80 kg, 15 kg payload, 3 km/h | Trades, workshops, industrial logistics, future household work |
| 4NE-1 Mini | Compact bipedal humanoid | ~1.32 m, same cognitive stack | Research, education, customer interaction |
| NEURA Quadruped | Four-legged robot | Unveiled at CES 2026 | Inspection, outdoor patrol, complex terrain |
MAiRA (Multi-sensing Intelligent Robotic Assistant) is the technical centrepiece. It combines AI-based 3D vision, audio processing, and onboard force sensing so the robot identifies parts, detects human presence, and replans motion in real time. Operators set up tasks through a tablet or voice rather than by writing kinematic code. MAiRA is the basis of the OMRON iCR series and Kawasaki's CL Series cobots, both carrying a "powered by NEURA" mark.[10][16][17]
LARA is the entry-level cobot, MAV handles in-factory and warehouse transport, and MiPA (My intelligent Personal Assistant) is the domestic service robot, billed by NEURA as the world's first cognitive household robot for real everyday use. MiPA is a two-armed mobile manipulator with autonomous navigation and multimodal sensors that can interact through speech, facial expressions, and gestures; NEURA has shown it running NVIDIA's GR00T N1 cognition model on NVIDIA Jetson compute. It was presented at the OMR Festival in Hamburg and at Automatica 2025, with pilot deliveries beginning in 2025 and skills such as dishwasher unloading and basic health checks built by partners on the Neuraverse.[2][9][18]
The 4NE-1 (pronounced "for anyone") is NEURA's bipedal humanoid. The third generation had its world premiere at Automatica 2025 in Munich: about 1.8 m tall, roughly 80 kg, a 15 kg working payload, and walking up to 3 km/h. High-torque leg joints develop around 490 Nm; NEURA says the joint technology can lift up to 100 kg, which it describes as the highest maximum capacity among general-purpose humanoids. A patented Omnisensor, with seven cameras and an Artificial Skin sensing layer, lets the robot detect contact before it happens. The exterior was developed with Studio F. A. Porsche. The 2026 4NE-1 Mini variant, about 1.32 m tall, debuted at a VfB Stuttgart Bundesliga match (matchday 26), handing off a microphone and a match ball during the club's Innovation Match Day. To build at volume, NEURA designed the NEURA Hive: a production cell where several robots arranged in a circle assemble new robots.[19][20][21]
The Neuraverse ties the lineup together: NEURA calls it the world's first scalable robotics app store. It runs on NEURON OS, which handles sensor fusion, motion control, and software updates across all NEURA hardware, with open APIs so partners can build apps without seeing NEURA's underlying IP. A skill demonstrated on one robot (such as a welding sequence developed with Abicor Binzel) can be packaged and downloaded by another robot in a different factory, like a smartphone app update.[18][22]
NEURA pairs the software with NEURA Gyms: physical training facilities where robots practise tasks under controlled variability, generating real-world data for Neuraverse models. The first NEURAGym in Asia opened in Hangzhou in October 2025. A larger facility, TUM RoboGym, was announced on 10 March 2026 with the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) at the Technical University of Munich: 2,300 sq m at TUM's Convergence Center at Munich Airport, with a launch investment near EUR 17 million (about EUR 11 million from NEURA). A fleet of humanoids starts training there from mid-2026. NEURA calls it Europe's largest scientific training centre for Physical AI.[15][23]
| Date | Round | Amount | Lead / key investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Early round | ~$86 million | European investor consortium |
| July 2023 | Series A | $55 million | Lingotto, Vsquared Ventures, HV Capital, others |
| Late 2023 | Series A extension | $16 million | InterAlpen Partners (USA) |
| 14 January 2025 | Series B | EUR 120 million (~$123 million) | Lingotto (lead), BlueCrest, Volvo Cars Tech Fund, InterAlpen, Vsquared, HV Capital, Delta Electronics, C4 Ventures, L-Bank, David Reger |
| 10 June 2026 | Series C | Up to $1.4 billion (milestone-based) | Tether (lead), NVIDIA, Amazon, Qualcomm, Bosch, Schaeffler, European Investment Bank, imec.xpand, Lingotto Horizon, InterAlpen Partners |
The Series C was first reported in November 2025 and formally announced on 10 June 2026. NEURA says it is the largest round ever raised by a full-stack robotics company; Bloomberg and Handelsblatt reported a valuation near $7 billion, placing NEURA among the most valuable private humanoid-robotics companies in the world and the most heavily funded in Europe.[5][6][7][13][27]
NEURA's commercial model leans on co-development and white-label deals with industrial groups.
| Partner | Year | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Omron Robotics | April 2024 | OMRON iCR cognitive cobot based on MAiRA; launched at Automate 2024 |
| Kawasaki Robotics (Kawasaki Heavy Industries) | 2024 | Kawasaki CL Series cobots (four models, 3 to 10 kg payload, +/-0.02 mm repeatability), branded "powered by NEURA," designed and built in Germany |
| Delta Electronics | 2024 to 2025 | Investor and supplier of drives and motion components |
| NVIDIA | 2024 to 2026 | Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, GR00T humanoid model, Jetson compute; Humanoid Robot Developer Program; Series C investor |
| SAP and NVIDIA | June 2025 | Three-way Physical AI collaboration: SAP Joule agents, NEURA robots, NVIDIA Omniverse digital twins |
| BITZER | 2025 | Pilot of 4NE-1 doing warehouse picking, jointly with SAP |
| Schaeffler | November 2025 | Planetary-gear actuators for humanoids; Schaeffler to integrate several thousand NEURA humanoids into its global plants by 2035; Series C investor |
| Bosch (Robert Bosch GmbH) | January 2026 | Strategic technology partnership; joint data collection, co-developed software, scaling support; Series C investor |
| Dassault Systemes | 2025 to 2026 | 3DEXPERIENCE platform for design, simulation, and lifecycle |
| TUM / MIRMI | March 2026 | TUM RoboGym Physical AI training centre at Munich Airport |
| Alibaba Cloud | October 2025 | Cloud partnership at the Hangzhou site opening |
| Amazon Web Services | April 2026 | Cloud for the Neuraverse, NEURA Gym data into Amazon SageMaker, exploratory deployments in Amazon fulfilment centres; Amazon a Series C investor |
| Qualcomm | March 2026 | Compute collaboration for Physical AI and cognitive robotics; Series C investor |
| Vodafone | 2024 to 2025 | 5G connectivity for fleets of NEURA robots |
| NODE Robotics | 2024 to 2025 | NODE.move navigation stack for MAV |
| Porsche Consulting | 2025 | Industrial deployment consulting; called NEURA robots a "real colleague" |
NEURA is also part of the "Made for Germany" industrial initiative launched in 2025; PRIMEPULSE SE, a Munich-based technology holding, is a long-standing strategic investor.[16][17][24][25][26][29]
NEURA's pitch is that bolting AI onto generic industrial arms as a software layer will not scale to humanoids or to small-batch manufacturing. The company designs sensors, joints, controllers, and AI together. In practice:
Not every observer is convinced. Reporting around the Tether-led Series C noted that the order book above $1 billion includes long-dated partner agreements and white-label volumes, and that the ~$7 billion valuation is well ahead of current shipped revenue. NEURA competes against Tesla Optimus, Figure AI, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and Chinese rivals such as Unitree and Fourier; whether the platform strategy holds against vertically integrated rivals is an open question. The company's answer is to keep stacking industrial partnerships (Bosch, Schaeffler, Omron, Kawasaki, SAP, AWS) and to emphasise that its robots are built in Germany under European safety standards. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino framed the investment around machine autonomy: "Autonomous machines need the ability to process information locally, make decisions, and transact without relying on centralized intermediaries."[6][7][24][27]