Physical AI and automation startup Mowito has raised $3 million in a pre-seed funding round. The fresh capital injection will be used to accelerate the startup’s expansion into the United States, scale its deployments, and strengthen both its engineering and go-to-market teams.

1. The Investor Lineup

The funding round reflects significant investor interest in early-stage physical artificial intelligence frameworks:

  • Lead Investor: The round was led by Version One Ventures.
  • Institutional & Angel Backing: Co-investors included All In Capital, Unisol, and iSeed.
  • Prominent Industry Angels: High-profile operators joined the cap table, including Soumith Chintala (co-creator of PyTorch), Adarsh Kulkarni (Head of Robotics at Scale AI), Ashish Kulkarni, and Vaibhav Domkundwar (Founder of Better Capital).

2. Core Offering: Giving Robotic Arms a “Brain”

Co-founded by Puru Rastogi, Adityanag Nagesh, and Safar V, the Bengaluru-based startup develops Physical AI foundation models specifically designed for industrial robotic arms.

Plaintext

       LEGACY ROBOTICS                             MOWITO PHYSICAL AI
┌─────────────────────────────┐             ┌─────────────────────────────┐
│ • Days of rigid programming │             │ • Learns via demonstrations │
│ • Needs code rewrites       │     vs      │ • Direct robot integration  │
│ • Susceptible to downtime   │             │ • Adapts to changes on-fly  │
└─────────────────────────────┘             └─────────────────────────────┘
  • Eliminating Rigid Code: Legacy industrial robots rely on rigid programming that can take days to configure. Worse, these programs must be completely rewritten whenever a product blueprint, component type, or line process changes.
  • Demonstration Learning: Mowito’s AI control software enables robots to learn manufacturing and item-picking tasks directly from human demonstrations rather than complex software code.
  • Hardware-Agnostic Setup: The system allows manufacturers and automation teams to instantly deploy flexible, fixture-free automation across varied tasks using their existing legacy robotic hardware and off-the-shelf components.

3. Real-World Deployment & Market Footprint

Mowito’s software is actively moving out of the lab and straight onto the factory floor. Its platform currently powers high-precision assembly lines for an unnamed Fortune 500 automotive company.

By providing AI-driven vision and force feedback that adapts instantly to moving conveyor belts and loading/unloading tasks, Mowito claims its tech can increase operational throughput by up to six times while heavily reducing setup times and deployment friction. The startup operates in a highly competitive industrial automation and machine vision space alongside legacy giants like Cognex, Keyence, Omron, and Fanuc.

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