Embodied AI
"Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Leave it to us"
Lausanne start-up building soft, compliant robots that learn factory tasks on site by imitation; first round led by Faber VC in September 2026.
Embodied AI is a Swiss robotics start-up headquartered at Chemin des Memises 2 in Lausanne, building a robotic workforce for European manufacturers that learns tasks directly on the production line. The company launched publicly in September 2026 together with its first financing round, which was led by Faber VC with participation from Techshop Capital, Look AI Ventures, Kickfund, Plug and Play San Francisco, Excellis and Vento. The amount was not disclosed. Besides Lausanne it is opening an office in Rome and states an existing presence in Delft in the Netherlands and Boston in the United States.
The founding team comes out of academic soft-robotics research. Francesco Stella, co-founder and chief executive, holds a PhD in robotics and AI from EPFL and carried out research at MIT CSAIL. Kai Junge, co-founder and chief technology officer, holds a master's degree from Cambridge and a PhD in robotic manipulation from EPFL. Max Polzin, co-founder and chief operating officer, trained at ETH Zurich and EPFL and was the first employee of Seervision, which he helped take through its exit. The scientific board includes Prof. Cosimo Della Santina of TU Delft and Prof. Josie Hughes of EPFL. The company says its team has published robotics research in Nature and Science.
Its robot, referred to on the website as AIR, is designed to be physically safe around people rather than fenced off: the company cites a soft exterior, low inertia, compliant joints and high-frequency sensing, with safety built into the mechanical design. No payload, reach or degrees-of-freedom figures are published. On the software side, Embodied AI does not pursue a single general-purpose model. It describes an "Embodied AI flywheel" in which task-specific small models are trained in production through imitation learning, while a human-in-the-loop teleoperation layer lets remote operators correct the robot when it meets an edge case, so that production keeps running and every intervention becomes new training data.
Target work is high-mix production with frequent changeovers and dexterous handling that fixed pick-and-place automation does not cover. Named application areas are electronics production, kitting, flexible cable handling, logistics cases and automotive assembly. The company states that it is deploying robots on the factory floors of large European manufacturers, without naming them. Deployment follows a site assessment, a rapid pilot and then scale-up, with no infrastructure changes required. Embodied AI reports that it has been selected as a Google DeepMind partner and is a member of the NVIDIA Inception programme; its website also shows support from Venture Kick, Founderful Campus, Google for Startups, ESA and the Swiss Confederation.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
AIR
Physically safe robot that learns dull, dirty and dangerous factory tasks on site through imitation learning.
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Contact Embodied AI
WEBSITE
https://embodiedai.chPHONE
+39 347 311 7492HEADQUARTERS
Switzerland
Company Facts
Founded
-
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Europe
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Early-Stage VC
Funding Total
-
Keywords
- Embodied AI
- Embodied AI SA
- imitation learning
- soft robotics
- compliant joints
- human-in-the-loop teleoperation
- task-specific models
- high-mix production
- cable handling
- kitting
- physical ai
- Manufacturer
- Software/Algorithm
- Collaborative Robot
- Control & Software
- Human-Machine Interaction
- Cobot
- Manufacturing
- Logistics & Supply Chain
- Assembly
