This week, Crunchbase released new numbers that show investments in robotics are once again going in the right way. After a record year in 2021, when the pandemic caused a lot of people to lose their jobs, the number of people generally steadily dropped over the next two years. As the second part of the year starts, 2024 is on track to do better than 2023.
So far this year, $4.2 billion has been invested in this area in the first six months. This year is on track to beat 2023’s total of $6.8 billion for the whole year. It’s still a long way from COVID’s all-time high of $17.7 billion in 2021 or even its low point of $10.3 billion in 2022.
However, this does show that the industry is getting better after being hit hard by economic problems and the need to restart after the pandemic.
The “white-hot humanoids” group kept getting stronger. Figure was the first to do that with a huge $675 million Series B. The needle moved a little after that raise. It was 1X that brought the other important artificial investment. One of the early backers of the Norwegian company is OpenAI. It made a good $100 million.
This year has been good for medical robots, thanks to big rounds from MMI and Rono Surgical. But once again, the biggest driver is labor replacement, as places like factories and stores look to automate jobs they can’t find enough people to do.
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Those needs won’t go away any time soon, and the continued interest from investors in all things AI is likely to help robotic startup growth even more. It’s too bad that it might take another outbreak for things to get back to where they were in 2021.
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