Walden Robotics

Proud to debut Walden Robotics, and share we've raised $300M in funding co-led by Toyota and Deviation Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, Boeing Ventures, Samsung, and others. We're building general-purpose robots that continuously learn while performing real work, alongside people. Today. youtube.com/watch?v=fewvZr…

I'm incredibly excited to share what we've been building: @WaldenRobotics - a full-stack, human-centric, customer-focused robotics company on a mission to build general-purpose robots and deploy them in the real world. The road here has been extraordinary. We've built the entire stack and pushed our robots into production. The hardest problems in AI and robotics aren't research problems anymore: since February, our robots have been doing useful work alongside people at a Toyota factory in North America. And most importantly, they learn and improve every day on the job. Here's a glimpse of our work so far: youtube.com/watch?v=fewvZr… It's the privilege of a lifetime to be building this alongside my co-founders: @RussTedrake, @Ben_Burchfiel, @adnothing, Kerri Fetzer-Borelli, Siyuan Feng and Dave Johnson, and a phenomenal founding team. What lies ahead is even more ambitious. If you're driven to get robots doing useful work in the real world, join us.

🚨 BREAKING: @WaldenRobotics has just come out of stealth with $300 million in funding and a $1.1 billion valuation. Another unicorn in the robotics space. 🦄 Just 6 months after incubation. The company was spun out of Toyota's robotics research lab by co-founder @RussTedrake, a former Toyota Research Institute executive and MIT professor who taught a course on robotic legs. The seed round was co-led by Deviation Capital and Toyota, with participation from: NVIDIA, Boeing, Samsung Ventures, CoreWeave Ventures and AE Ventures. The robot is already working. A pilot is live at a North American Toyota factory where a Walden humanoid is pulling eight-hour shifts alongside human workers, loading and unloading car parts, cleaning machinery, kitting for assembly. A shift. Every day. Walden builds its own hardware, software and AI models, designed to continuously learn and improve in real production environments. Tedrake's words on the opportunity are worth noting: "Everyone recognises the magnitude of the opportunity and the technology feels ready, but success is not assured. You have to think through the business case, the unit economics, and how to marry the best of manufacturing and logistics with disruptive AI technology." Rare honesty in a space full of hype. The race to own that market is accelerating every single week. 🤖 Great story by Bloomberg here: bloomberg.com/news/articles/… ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news → ziegler.substack.com

Super proud to see @RussTedrake and @WaldenRobotics come out of stealth today, with @deviationcap co-leading their $300m round alongside a phenomenal partner in Toyota. This is a truly generational robotics team who pioneered Diffusion Policy and Large Behavior Models (LBMs) during years that the team was together at Toyota Research Institute, before spinning out earlier this year. All those years of ‘pre-incubation’ of Walden mean that this company has put robots into production within just a few months of being formed - much faster than any company I’ve seen before in this space. Their form factor is perfectly suited to many manufacturing tasks that are bottlenecked today because of lack of available labor. I’ve been looking to back a company like this for years - specifically a wheeled quasi-humanoid that can handle the large amount of smart manufacturing work that is coming back onshore to the U.S. but faces hiring constraints, and I couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect team. I’m tremendously excited to watch them continue to progress. youtube.com/watch?v=fewvZr…

Thanks to @HeySamantha and @Bloomberg for covering our launch bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The hardest problems in AI aren't research problems anymore. They're deployment problems. It’s how we actually deliver real value, today, to build the future people want. That’s why, after 20 years in AI, my next step was inevitable: make robots do useful work for and alongside people, right now. Today, I am delighted to announce the launch of @WaldenRobotics to tackle just that. We started this year and are coming out of stealth today with a $300M seed round backed by some of the most serious companies and investors in the world. They have seen firsthand our general-purpose robots being useful in production on day one, and getting better every day after. You can see a glimpse of what we've been building in the video below. Physical AI has gone through a rapid phase transition, in part thanks to pioneering research from my friends and co-founders @RussTedrake , @Ben_Burchfiel , Siyuan Feng, @RaresAmbrus , and many others at Walden. But from our long experience working together with co-founders Kerri Fetzer-Borelli and Dave Johnson, we learned how hard it is to deploy cutting-edge AI in a real, live, incredibly sophisticated production environment with an intricate ballet of automation and human ingenuity. That’s why we deliberately created Walden Robotics as a full-stack, human-centric, customer-focused robotics company from the start: we seeded the company with a world-class team across hardware, software, AI, deployment, operations, product, and business talent, so we could continuously optimize our whole system end-to-end, deeply and purposefully, from real-world experience with real customers. The efficacy of this strategy speaks for itself: since February, our general-purpose robots have been doing useful work in production at a Toyota plant in North America, moving from first pilot to real work in under two months. Not a lab. Not a demo. Not a future promise. Real work on a real line, today, at one of the best large-scale manufacturers in the world, with general-purpose robots that get better every day. And this is just the beginning. Two ways to find us: If you run a manufacturing or logistics business and want robots that are widely useful now, not someday, let's talk. We own “hirearobot.com” for a reason! And if you want to build them: we're hiring across the company, from software, to hardware, AI, ops, product, business, and more. In particular, as the Chief Strategy Officer at Walden, I am recruiting for three incredibly impactful founding roles to fuel our agent-native go-to-market engine. Check out waldenrobotics.com/careers Let’s build together!

It's a pleasure and privilege to count Russ as a friend and co-founder at @WaldenRobotics Check out his blog below to learn more about our purpose. Our robots are already doing real work for and alongside people today, and we're just getting started. Let's build together!

In January, I started "building something new" with an incredible team. Today I finally get to share some first details about what we've been building. We've called it Walden Robotics (waldenrobotics.com). I thought long and hard about my own reasons for starting this company. It's not only about the robots. It's also about people. I've tried to capture those thoughts in my first Walden blog post: waldenrobotics.com/news/why-walden It's been an incredible ride so far. Within just a few months of forming the company, we were already operating a general-purpose robot with an end-to-end policy in production in one of the most important factories in North America. It's amazing at how much I've already learned from that experience. There is a lot of work to do, but the mission has never been so clear. Please help me welcome Walden Robotics into the world. And stay tuned for more updates! youtube.com/watch?v=fewvZr…

Great piece from @HeySamantha on what we're up to at Walden and what's next for Physical AI bloomberg.com/news/articles/…