SafeWorld
Oakland, California startup whose browser-based simulator stress-tests robots around people; raised a USD 12.2M seed in October 2026.
SafeWorld is an Oakland, California software company that tests how robots behave around people before and after they are deployed. It describes its product as a safety testing and evaluation platform for robots working around people, and it emerged from stealth on 8 October 2026 with a 12.2 million US dollar seed round co-led by Shine Capital and a16z Speedrun.
The platform targets AI-driven robots of several embodiments, including robot arms, humanoids and mobile robots. Safety and engineering teams build test scenarios in a browser from past incidents, safety standards and robot logs, without needing simulation expertise. The system then generates possible robot and human paths, predicts interaction risk, and runs the robot through thousands of variations with reactive human motion, recording evidence for each run. Tests are designed to be repeatable and to map onto requirements and safety practice, so they can be rerun after a software update or when a robot moves to a new site. Published technical notes cover topics such as converting a hazard into a test case and finding false negatives in robot human detection under occlusion. A beta waitlist and request-access form are open.
The company was co-founded by Kyle Wong, chief executive, who previously founded and led the marketing software firm Pixlee and later ran the Stanford StartX accelerator; Ding Zhao, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who directs the Safe AI Lab and previously worked at Google DeepMind; and Simo Rachidi, a former principal engineer at Salesforce Einstein Cybersecurity and founding engineer at Pixlee.
Other seed participants include BoxGroup, the Carnegie Mellon University Endowment, Innovation Endeavors, SV Angel, Ovo Fund, Valkyrie, Zelda Ventures, Alpha Square Group, Founders Future and Brave Capital, along with individual founders and executives from Waymo, NVIDIA, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Aurora, Amazon Robotics, Dyna Robotics and Generalist.
At launch SafeWorld said it was working with about six companies, roughly two thirds of them publicly traded, across industrial, manufacturing, logistics, construction and some home use cases. Anyware Robotics, a maker of truck-unloading robots, is the one customer named publicly. The stated mission is to improve robot safety for the next billion machines, and the new capital is earmarked for hiring.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
SafeWorld robot safety testing platform
Browser-based simulator that generates human-robot scenarios, predicts interaction risk and logs evidence per test.
More related news
-
1
RobotToday Weekly October 5 – 9, 2026 RobotToday · Oct 10, 2026
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
-
8
IROS 2026 Best Paper Finalists: South Korea Leads RobotToday · Oct 07, 2026
- 9
-
10
IEEE CASE 2027 Linz: Aug 23–27 | Automation Science RobotToday · Oct 06, 2026
-
11
ROSCon Korea 2027: Feb 17–19 at DGIST, Daegu RobotToday · Oct 05, 2026
- 12
- 13
- 14
-
15
Tuning the Brain Like a Radio: Synapse Symphony’s Plan to Treat Chronic Pain at Home RobotToday · Sep 30, 2026
-
16
RobotToday Weekly September 21 – 25, 2026 RobotToday · Sep 26, 2026
-
17
Glacian: Physics Model Vets AI Data Center Cooling RobotToday · Sep 23, 2026
-
18
Siemens on Robots, Agentic AI and the "Last 3%" Problem RobotToday · Sep 23, 2026
-
19
Innovation Works Venture Expo 2026: 58 Pittsburgh Startups Pitch to Investors RobotToday · Sep 16, 2026
- 20
Company Facts
Founded
-
Primary Role
Software/Algorithm
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Early-Stage VC
Funding Total
$ 12,200,000
