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Switzerland-based mimic has raised $16 million to deploy frontier physical AI for robots that can handle complex, dexterous tasks in manufacturing and logistics – positioning itself as the leading European player in the global race towards general purpose robotics.
Zurich, Switzerland – 3 November 2025; mimic, a Zurich-based robotics company, has raised $16 million in funding led by Elaia, alongside Speedinvest, to deploy its frontier physical AI across industries, enabling robots to handle complex, dexterous tasks that conventional machines cannot. This heavily oversubscribed seed round also included participation from Founderful, 1st kind, 10X Founders, 2100 Ventures and Sequoia Scout Fund, bringing mimic’s total funding to over $20 million. The new capital will accelerate the development of mimic’s foundation AI model and humanoid robotic hands, and advance deployments with leading global industry players.
On factory floors around the world, millions of intricate manual tasks still depend on human skill. These tasks remain out of reach for traditional automation across industries including manufacturing, assembly and logistics. With labour shortages growing and industries reshoring production amid global uncertainty, the need for versatile and intelligent robots has never been clearer. Traditional robots excel at repetitive, pre-programmed motions in controlled environments, but require costly setup and custom coding for each task. At the same time, the race to build humanoid robots has drawn billions in investment, led largely by companies in the US and China, but adoption remains very limited. Safety and regulatory concerns, high costs and limited dexterity have all slowed real-world deployment.
“Humanoids are exciting, but there aren’t many industrial scenarios where the full-body form factor truly adds value,” says Stephan-Daniel Gravert, co-founder and CPO at mimic. “Our approach pairs AI-driven dexterous robotic hands with proven, off-the-shelf robot arms to deliver the same capabilities in a way that is much simpler, more reliable and rapidly deployable.
mimic builds frontier physical AI models trained on real-world human demonstrations, using innovative methods to overcome the data scarcity problem in robotics. Skilled operators wear mimic’s proprietary data collection devices while performing their daily work on factory floors, capturing detailed movement data from live production settings without disrupting operations. These demonstrations are then used to train AI models via imitation learning, enabling mimic’s humanoid robotic hands to reliably reproduce human technique. The company’s physical AI models ensure that robots autonomously react to changing positions and orientations of objects, handle disturbances and self-correct their actions, seamlessly operating in environments designed for humans.
“Our general purpose AI models allow us to automate manual labour in a way that simply was not possible before,” says Elvis Nava, co-founder and CTO at mimic. “Thanks to our unique focus on human-like dexterity and human data, we are competitive at the robot foundation model layer as well as the application layer.”
Labour markets across industrial economies are under sustained pressure. Aging workforces, rising production costs and efforts to reduce dependence on global supply chains are driving a shift towards reshoring and automation. Analysts project the global humanoid and dexterous robotics market alone could reach $38 billion by 2035, within a broader robotics market estimated between $200 billion and $1 trillion by 2040.
mimic’s technology is already being piloted with top-tier manufacturers, including Fortune 500 companies and global automotive brands. mimic is also partnering with leading multinational logistics providers and seeing strong customer demand across many other labour-intensive sectors.
Founded in 2024 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich, mimic brings together a multidisciplinary team of 25 engineers, researchers, and operators. Over the past year, the company has secured non-dilutive funding from Switzerland’s federal innovation agency and was selected for the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, a program supporting early-stage companies applying advanced AI to real-world challenges.
“We’re at an inflection point in robotics where learning-based systems meet real industrial needs,” says Stefan Weirich, co-founder and CEO at mimic. “We make dexterity deployable at scale, closing the gap between what AI can do in the lab and what factories actually need. Europe has the talent, the infrastructure, and the demand, and we’re building the company that brings all of this together.”
Clément Vanden Driessche, Partner at Elaia, says “Elaia is thrilled to lead the seed round in mimic. The world-class team at mimic is addressing one of the most challenging problems in physical AI: dexterous manipulation. mimic’s breakthrough approach integrates a proprietary robotic hand, state-of-the-art foundation models for robotics, and novel data acquisition and training methods.” Vincent Faber, Investment Manager at Elaia adds “This enables autonomous, versatile manipulation and unlocks a previously untapped segment of the automation market, where the demand for flexible solutions continues to grow.”
Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, General Partner at Speedinvest, says, “At Speedinvest, we’ve always believed that Europe’s strength lies in marrying world-class engineering with foundational research. With mimic, we see exactly that: a platform that unlocks human-level dexterity with frontier AI and solves billion-dollar problems on factory floors today. This is the moment Europe steps forward to compete and lead in the new era of AI and robotics”
About mimic
mimic, a Zurich-based physical AI and robotics company, enables robots to handle complex, dexterous tasks autonomously. The core focus is developing an AI foundation model and humanoid robotic hands which make human-level dexterity deployable across industries. By combining advanced AI, scalable hardware, and a unique solution to the data scarcity in robotics, the company is building a foundation for the next generation of intelligent automation – robots that can finally do what people do, at the scale industry demands. mimic was founded by Stefan Weirich (CEO), Stephan-Daniel Gravert (CPO), Elvis Nava (CTO), Benedek Forrai (Founding Engineer) and Robert Katzschmann (Scientific Advisor). Learn more at mimicrobotics.com.
About Elaia
Elaia is a European full stack tech and deep tech investor. We partner with ambitious entrepreneurs from inception to leadership, helping them navigate the future and the unknown. For over twenty years, we have combined deep scientific and technological expertise with decades of operational experience to back those building tomorrow. Our joint venture with Lazard, Lazard Elaia Capital, enables us to support exceptional founders at any stage. From our offices in Paris, Barcelona and Tel Aviv, we have been active partners with over 100 startups including Criteo, Mirakl, Shift Technology, AQEMIA and Alice & Bob. Learn more at elaia.com.
About Speedinvest
Speedinvest is a leading early-stage venture capital firm with more than €1 billion AuM and investors based in Berlin, London, Munich, Paris, and Vienna. Our dedicated sector-focused teams are the first to fund Europe’s most innovative technology startups, and our in-house operational experts offer founders ongoing support with growth, HR, market expansion, and more. Bitpanda, GoStudent, Wayflyer, Tide, Moove, CoachHub, Gigs, and Adverity are among our portfolio of 400+ companies. Learn more at www.speedinvest.com.
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Image source: mimicrobotics.com
