Apptronik
Apollo humanoid maker, spun out of University of Texas Human Centered Robotics Lab. Raised $350M Series A (Feb-2025; B Capital + Capital Factory); Mercedes-Benz manufacturing partner (Mar 2024). Partnered with Google DeepMind on Gemini Robotics (Mar 2025) — Apollo is the headline reference platform for Gemini Robotics.
Active · Verified 2026-10-27 · fresh as of 2026-10-27 · 33 cited facts, 2 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Tier
- T2
- Created
- 2016 (founded) vendor fix
- Latest release
- Apollo (humanoid) vendor fix
- License
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo fix
- Pricing
- not applicable — wrong section fix
- Funding
- Over $935M Series A (incl. $520M Series A-X extension Feb-2026; B Capital, Google, Mercedes-Benz, PEAK6, plus new AT&T Ventures, John Deere, QIA); nearly $1B total raised vendor fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-27 fix
- Layer
- large-models repo fix
- Licensing
- commercial vendor fix
When to use
Optimised for: Industrial humanoid platform reference for Gemini Robotics FM
Anti-fit: Industrial-only; closed platform; humanoid scale-up still pilot-stage
Pros & cons
Pros
Google DeepMind partnership puts Apollo at FM-research frontier; Mercedes pilot; $350M Series A.
Cons
Smaller than Figure; industrial-only; closed platform.
Claims & capabilities
$350M Series A Feb-2025; Google DeepMind / Gemini Robotics partner Mar-2025; Mercedes-Benz manufacturing pilot
Technical surface
- API surface
- No public API
- Backend storage
- Internal Apptronik cloud
- Deployment
- Direct customer (manufacturing + logistics)
- Embedding model
- not applicable — not a memory product
- Multi-tenancy
- Per-customer fleet
- MCP
- not applicable — wrong section
- A2A
- not applicable — wrong section
- OpenTelemetry
- not applicable — wrong section
Similar systems
Other robotics foundation models & agent stacks in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Google DeepMind Gemini Robotics T1
Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics + Gemini Robotics-ER (Embodied Reasoning) released Mar-2025. VLA models built on Gemini 2.0 backbone. Reference platform: Apptronik Apollo. The DeepMind line of robotics-FM, descendant of earlier RT-1 / RT-2 / RT-X work.
- Physical Intelligence (π) T1
Founded 2024 by Sergey Levine (UC Berkeley) and Karol Hausman + others (ex-Google Brain Robotics). Building general-purpose robot foundation models (π0 released Oct-2024; π0.5 in 2025) trained on cross-embodiment robot trajectories. Raised $400M Series A (Nov-2024; Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive, Lux) at $2.4B val. Released π0.7 (2026-04-16) and opened its models through the Pi API beta (2026-10-13).
- 1X Technologies T2
Norway / US humanoid robot company — Eve (wheeled bimanual) + Neo (legged humanoid, consumer-targeted, late 2025 / 2026 launch). Raised $100M Series B (Jan-2024, EQT + OpenAI Startup Fund); $40M Series A (Mar-2023, OpenAI lead). Distinguishing feature: consumer-home positioning rather than industrial.
- Agility Robotics T2
Oregon-based humanoid maker; Digit is in production at GXO Logistics warehouses since Sep-2024 — claimed first humanoid in commercial service in the US. Spinout of Oregon State University. $400M+ raised (Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund participant).
- Collaborative Robotics T3
Founded 2022 by Brad Porter (ex-Amazon Robotics VP + Scale AI CTO). Stealthier than the humanoid pack; raised $100M Series B Apr-2024 (General Catalyst). Targets warehouse + healthcare collaborative robots.
- Covariant T2
Pieter Abbeel / Peter Chen-founded robotics FM company — built RFM-1 (Robotics Foundation Model, Mar 2024) for warehouse pick-and-place. In Aug 2024 Amazon took a non-exclusive license to its robotic foundation models and hired founders Abbeel, Chen and Rocky Duan plus research staff; Covariant was not acquired and continued serving customers. As of 2026-10-29 covariant.ai is a placeholder page (logo, video and a 2026 copyright line only; no product or contact pages).
Sources (32 cited facts, 2 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is Humanoid robot maker (Apollo) — Google DeepMind partner vendor
- What it does & what's distinct Apollo humanoid maker, spun out of University of Texas Human Centered Robotics Lab. Rais… vendor
- Claims / benefits $350M Series A Feb-2025; Google DeepMind / Gemini Robotics partner Mar-2025; Mercedes-Be… vendor
- Modalities vision + language + bimanual action vendor
- Created 2016 (founded) vendor
- Latest release Apollo (humanoid) vendor
- Mindshare Major headlines on Google DeepMind + Mercedes-Benz partnerships vendor
- Funding Over $935M Series A (incl. $520M Series A-X extension Feb-2026; B Capital, Google, Merce… vendor
- Customers / scale Mercedes-Benz; GXO Logistics; manufacturing pilots vendor
- Data handling Internal trajectory data; closed weights vendor
- Deployment Direct customer (manufacturing + logistics) vendor
- HQ US (Austin, TX) vendor
- Founders / pedigree Jeff Cardenas (CEO) + Nick Paine (CTO) — UT Austin Human Centered Robotics Lab vendor
- Memory volume / scale Pilot fleet vendor
- Performance Gemini Robotics demos on Apollo (Mar 2025) third-party
- API surface No public API vendor
- Backend storage Internal Apptronik cloud vendor
- Multi-tenancy Per-customer fleet vendor
- Encryption Enterprise-grade vendor
- Versioning Apollo generation versioning vendor
- Namespace primitives per-customer vendor
- Validated verticals manufacturing (Mercedes), logistics (GXO) vendor
- Time to running Months (manufacturing-cell integration) vendor
- Anti-fit Industrial-only; closed platform; humanoid scale-up still pilot-stage vendor
- Optimised for Industrial humanoid platform reference for Gemini Robotics FM vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure Google DeepMind Gemini Robotics; Mercedes manufacturing third-party
- Pros Google DeepMind partnership puts Apollo at FM-research frontier; Mercedes pilot; $350M S… vendor
- Cons Smaller than Figure; industrial-only; closed platform. vendor
- Project & sources apptronik.com; deepmind.google/technologies/gemini-robotics vendor
- licensing-bucket commercial vendor
- positioning-platform-vs-product product vendor
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup large-models repo
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
Related systems
References (2)
- Google DeepMind Gemini Robotics depends on at runtime — adjacent-infrastructure cell: Google DeepMind Gemini Robotics; Mercedes manufacturing
- Google Gemini 3 family depends on at runtime — adjacent-infrastructure cell: Google DeepMind Gemini Robotics; Mercedes manufacturing