Eka Robotics raises $150 million at a $1.45 billion valuation

Eka Robotics, founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja, raised $150 million in a Series A led by a16z and F-Prime, valuing the startup at $1.45 billion post-money, according to TechCrunch. The company developed a manipulation architecture with a force-sensitive gripper and a deep-learning model that links vision, force and action rather than only vision, language and action.

Eka says its robot can pick up about 1,500 objects weighing up to 1 kg per hour, compared with about 600 for a human, and does so successfully more than 95% of the time. Experts told TechCrunch they were impressed by its speed, its ability to adapt to different objects without retraining and the human-like quality of its movements. Pulkit Agrawal told the outlet that force and contact are essential for completing a grasp without crushing delicate objects such as a raspberry.