What’s funding like in the Physical AI market right now?

All funding deals in the Physical AI Market over the last 24 months

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Physical AI Market.

Is Physical AI funding actually healthier now than a year ago?

Physical AI funding is healthier today for companies that have already proved something, but the market has become tougher for brand-new entrants.

We counted 153 financings across 142 companies in the latest 12 months, compared with 124 deals across 113 companies in the previous period. The median disclosed round also rose from $21.1 million to $42 million. That gives us real evidence of a broader and better-funded market, beyond the huge rounds that dominated the headlines.

The weaker part is startup formation. First financings fell from 29 to 27 even as the overall market grew, while early-stage deals dropped from 57.3% to 49.0% of activity. Later-stage financings moved the other way, rising from 26.6% to 37.9%.

Physical AI is therefore in better shape if we define health as the ability to fund and scale credible companies. It looks less healthy if we care about how many new companies are entering the funded ecosystem.

Metric	Latest 12 months	Previous 12 months	Change
Deals	153	124	+23.4%
Unique companies	142	113	+25.7%
Disclosed capital	$44.96B	$13.14B	+242%
Median round	$42.0M	$21.1M	+99%
First financings	27	29	-6.9%
Early-stage deal share	49.0%	57.3%	-8.2pp
Later-stage deal share	37.9%	26.6%	+11.3pp

Did Physical AI funding really triple?

Physical AI funding did jump from $13.14 billion to $44.96 billion, but the apparent tripling badly exaggerates what happened across the typical financing market.

When we remove rounds above $50 million, current funding comes to about $1.36 billion versus $1.30 billion previously, a gain of just 4.5%. If we instead remove rounds above $100 million, growth is still only 6.8%.

Most of the extra $31.8 billion therefore came from the upper end of the market.

And that upper end has become remarkably deep. Current deals include Anduril at $5 billion, Shield AI at $2 billion, Saronic at $1.75 billion, Skild AI at $1.4 billion, NEURA Robotics at up to $1.4 billion, Wayve at $1.2 billion, Quantum Systems at $1.2 billion, XPENG Robotics at more than $900 million and Waabi at $750 million.

The useful takeaway today is that Physical AI has developed a serious billion-dollar financing class. The small-round market barely expanded.

Is Waymo making the Physical AI boom look bigger than it really is?

Waymo makes the Physical AI funding boom look much bigger, but the current market has enough other huge financings that we cannot reduce the whole story to one company.

Waymo's $16 billion round represented 35.6% of current capital. Interestingly, the largest deal accounted for an even bigger 42.6% share one year earlier. Top-three concentration also fell from 54.8% to 51.2%.

What exploded instead was the number of very large rounds. We counted 53 deals above $100 million in the latest period, compared with 22 previously. Capital from rounds above that threshold reached 93.7% of the current total.

Waymo itself also tells us something useful about what can attract this kind of money now. In the company's financing announcement, it said it had completed 15 million rides during 2025 and was already providing more than 400,000 rides per week. The money was tied to expansion into more than 20 additional cities, which makes it a good example of capital following operating scale rather than a speculative autonomous-driving experiment.

Concentration measure	Latest 12 months	Previous 12 months
Largest deal share	35.6%	42.6%
Top 3 share	51.2%	54.8%
Top 5 share	58.2%	60.5%
Top 10 share	70.3%	68.8%
Deals above $50M	71	40
Deals above $100M	53	22
Capital from >$100M rounds	93.7%	79.9%

Are more Physical AI companies getting funded now?

Yes. Physical AI funding currently reaches a noticeably larger group of companies, even though most of the extra money goes to the biggest rounds.

Unique funded companies increased by almost 26%, slightly faster than deal count. We also found fewer companies raising more than once during the period: the repeat-fundraising rate fell from 9.7% to 7.0%.

So market breadth really did improve. The rise in deal activity was not produced by a tiny collection of startups doing repeated rounds.

What changed is the type of company benefiting from that breadth. Many of the additional recipients already had financing histories. The market added funded companies without generating a similar increase in first-time funded startups.

Are investors still backing new Physical AI startups?

New Physical AI startups are having a harder time winning capital today than the headline market growth suggests.

First financings slipped from 29 to 27, and their share of activity fell from 23.4% to 17.6%. Meanwhile, follow-ons increased from 95 to 125.

Round size makes the divide even clearer. The median first financing declined from $12.85 million to $11.5 million. The median follow-on jumped from $29 million to $64 million.

Investors are still willing to fund the beginning of a Physical AI company, but we see no comparable inflation in the checks written at that point. The big increase comes once a company has already survived an earlier fundraising cycle and can make a stronger case for scaling.

Metric	First financings now	Follow-ons now	First financings previously	Follow-ons previously
Deal count	27	125	29	95
Deal share	17.6%	81.7%	23.4%	76.6%
Capital	$2.25B	$42.71B	$616M	$12.53B
Median round	$11.5M	$64M	$12.85M	$29M
Absolute deal trend	Down	Up strongly	-	-
Median-round trend	Down	Up strongly	-	-
Main beneficiary	New entrants	Existing funded companies	-	-

Has the funding bar moved up for Physical AI startups?

The Physical AI funding bar has moved sharply upward after seed, particularly around Series A and Series B.

Seed rounds did not join the inflation. Their median actually fell from $10 million to $7.25 million. Series A moved very differently, with the median rising from $15.2 million to $45 million. At Series B, it went from $44 million to $100 million.

Series D+ financings also became much larger, reaching a $200 million median versus $103 million before. Series C remained huge but moved the other way, from $181 million to $145 million.

We increasingly see two different funding environments. A company can still start with a relatively modest check, but once investors decide that it deserves to scale, the available capital is far larger than it was a year ago.

Stage	Current deals	Current share	Previous share	Current median / Previous median
Seed	39	25.5%	27.4%	$7.25M / $10M
Series A	36	23.5%	29.8%	$45M / $15.2M
Series B	25	16.3%	11.3%	$100M / $44M
Series C	15	9.8%	7.3%	$145M / $181M
Series D+	13	8.5%	8.1%	$200M / $103M
Growth Equity	5	3.3%	0%	$32.8M* / :
Unknown	20	13.1%	16.1%	$19M / $24.1M

*The Growth Equity median is not very informative here because the group contains extremely large outliers.

Why are $100 million Physical AI rounds becoming so common?

Nine-figure Physical AI rounds are becoming common because selected companies are now raising for production, deployment and commercial scale rather than simply proving that the technology works.

The distribution changed quickly. $100 million-plus rounds moved from 19.0% to 40.3% of known-size deals. At the same time, the $5 million–$20 million band lost 14.6 percentage points of deal share and the $50 million–$100 million band lost eight points.

Recent company announcements help explain why. Quantum Systems said its $1.2 billion Series D would support industrial scale-up of autonomous systems across air, land and sea. Apptronik said its $520 million extension would accelerate Apollo production and commercial deployments. NEURA Robotics said its financing of up to $1.4 billion would fund serial production and real-world robot training environments.

Wayve is another useful example. The company raised $1.2 billion for scaled commercial deployment of its autonomy platform and later added strategic capital from AMD, Arm and Qualcomm. Today, these giant rounds increasingly pay for the expensive work that comes after a technology demonstration: factories, hardware supply, training infrastructure, deployment fleets and international rollout.

Which part of Physical AI has the strongest momentum right now?

Drones and Mobile Autonomy currently has the strongest broad-based momentum in Physical AI because both the number of funded companies and the money behind them moved sharply upward.

Deals increased from 20 to 48, while capital climbed from $1.63 billion to $13.27 billion. Few major categories show breadth and funding intensity moving together this clearly.

Quantum Systems is a good illustration of where the segment is heading. The company described its recent $1.2 billion round as financing for industrial-scale, multi-domain autonomy and pointed to growing revenue and profitability. It has also been expanding production across several countries and participating in European defense-drone initiatives.

Humanoid robotics looks different. Its deal share barely moved, yet its median financing rose from $53 million to $158.5 million. Industrial and Warehouse Robotics also lost relative deal share while its median increased from $12 million to $32 million.

Physical AI Control Software looks weakest on breadth. Deals fell from 18 to 12, while its median stayed close to the previous level. These days, investors seem much more willing to finance platforms tied directly to machines, deployment and production than to expand every layer of the Physical AI stack equally.

Are autonomous vehicles really making a comeback?

Autonomous Vehicle funding is huge again, but we would not call it a broad startup comeback because the number of deals did not increase.

We recorded nine Autonomous Vehicle financings in each period. Current capital nevertheless reached $18.41 billion, with a funding-intensity index far above every other category.

Waymo explains much of the difference, while Wayve and Waabi show that investors are also backing other platforms that have moved closer to commercial use. Wayve said its latest capital would support robotaxi trials and deployment of its autonomy software in production vehicles. Waabi tied its $750 million Series C to commercial autonomous trucking and expansion into robotaxis through a partnership with Uber.

The current Autonomous Vehicle market looks mature rather than broad. Money is available in extraordinary quantities when investors believe a platform has a believable route into large-scale deployment.

Is humanoid robot funding finally moving beyond demos?

Humanoid robotics funding is moving beyond demos now, with a much larger share of capital tied to manufacturing, deployment and robot-training infrastructure.

The category's deal frequency barely changed, yet typical round size became dramatically larger. NEURA Robotics said its new capital would support serial production and a network of real-world training environments for cognitive robots. Apptronik is using its latest financing to scale Apollo production and expand commercial deployments with industrial customers.

XPENG Robotics adds a more recent Asian example. Its robotics business raised more than $900 million at a valuation above $6.3 billion and said the capital would accelerate mass production of its IRON humanoid robot, Physical AI model development and global commercialization. XPENG has also said it expects large-scale customer deliveries to begin in 2027.

There is still plenty to prove around costs, reliability and deployment economics. But the financing question has clearly moved forward. Investors are increasingly paying for the attempt to manufacture and operate these machines at scale.

Is Physical AI funding shifting away from the US?

Physical AI funding is becoming more geographically diverse, with Europe gaining real breadth and China combining more deals with much larger rounds.

North America recorded 67 deals in both periods. Its share fell because other regions grew faster, rather than because activity collapsed. The U.S. itself moved only slightly, from 64 to 63 deals, while its median round rose from $27 million to $52 million.

Europe increased from 23 deals to 41 and moved from roughly $749 million of funding to $5.91 billion. The UK went from two deals to 11. Germany stayed at nine deals but drew several very large robotics and autonomy financings.

China also strengthened. Deals increased from 22 to 30, and the median financing moved from roughly $69 million to almost $140 million. XPENG Robotics' recent $900 million-plus financing fits that pattern and gives us another example of Chinese Physical AI capital moving toward commercialization at large scale.

The geography of Physical AI today is broader than it was a year ago. North America remains dominant in dollars, but Europe is producing more funded companies and China is funding companies at increasingly large sizes.

Are more investors piling into Physical AI now?

Yes. More investors are active in Physical AI now, and the market has expanded without becoming obviously controlled by a smaller club of repeat backers.

We identified 249 unique disclosed lead or strategic investors in the latest period, up from 182. Unique disclosed leads increased from 123 to 158.

At the same time, repeat-investor participation stayed close to 30% in both periods. A growing investor count can otherwise hide a market where the same handful of firms still dominate every syndicate; we do not see much evidence of that here.

Current recurring names include NVIDIA and NVentures, IDG Capital, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia, Eclipse, Andreessen Horowitz, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Booz Allen Ventures and Lockheed Martin. NVIDIA's recent activity goes beyond financing as well: the company is pushing its Cosmos, Isaac and Halos platforms deeper into robotics deployments with manufacturers and robot developers.

We would still avoid reading the investor counts as a complete map of every syndicate because public announcements frequently omit participants. The direction is clear enough: funding supply has broadened alongside the number of funded companies.

Are strategic investors taking over Physical AI funding?

Strategic investors are playing a somewhat bigger role in Physical AI, but the much stronger change is the size of the rounds they are joining.

Strategic participation increased from 42.7% to 45.1% of deals. The median strategic-backed financing rose much more sharply, from $61 million to $100 million.

That fits what we see in individual rounds. Apptronik's recent financing included Google, Mercedes-Benz, John Deere and AT&T Ventures. Wayve brought in automakers and semiconductor companies. XPENG Robotics attracted Tencent and Alibaba alongside financial investors. NEURA's syndicate included Qualcomm, Amazon, NVIDIA, Bosch and Schaeffler.

Strategic capital currently reaches companies well beyond seed. In our current period, strategic investors appeared across Series A, B, C, D+ and growth financings. Their participation increasingly connects funding with manufacturing capability, hardware ecosystems, distribution, customers and deployment infrastructure.

Are Physical AI companies raising money faster than before?

Physical AI companies do not appear to be returning for money faster, at least among the companies whose previous rounds we could reliably reconstruct.

The median observable gap between rounds increased from 7.5 months to 12 months. The share returning within one year fell from 80% to 54.3%.

We would give this finding less weight than the deal-count or round-size results. Previous-round linkage is available for only 46 of 125 current follow-ons and 20 of 95 follow-ons in the earlier period, so the comparison is based on incomplete and uneven histories.

What we can say confidently is that the current boom does not give us evidence of startups constantly coming back to market at shorter intervals. Larger rounds have become easier for selected companies to obtain, while the observable time between financings has certainly not collapsed.

Do Physical AI startups need more proof to raise big rounds now?

The biggest Physical AI rounds today are going to companies that can show much more than a promising prototype.

Waymo entered its latest financing with millions of commercial rides behind it. Quantum Systems highlighted both fast-growing revenue and profitability. NEURA has tied its expansion plans to serial production and large-scale robot training. Apptronik is already working with industrial partners including Mercedes-Benz and GXO. Waabi is connecting autonomous trucking with a new Uber robotaxi partnership.

This fits the broader funding shift toward follow-ons and later stages. Investors appear comfortable taking enormous financial risk once they can point to customer adoption, production capability, contracts, deployment partnerships or strong technical validation.

We cannot put a clean percentage on that change because our research does not provide a standardized milestone field for every financing. That limitation is important. Still, the current megaround cohort gives us a fairly clear picture of the proof investors reward when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.

Are Physical AI companies still raising to build, or are they raising to scale?

The best-funded Physical AI companies are increasingly raising to scale things that already work rather than to fund the first version of a product.

Waymo is financing geographic expansion of an operating robotaxi service. Quantum Systems is financing industrial scale-up. Apptronik is expanding production and deployment. NEURA is building serial-production capacity and robot-training infrastructure. XPENG Robotics is preparing mass production. Wayve is moving its autonomy technology toward commercial vehicles and robotaxis.

That does not mean R&D has become unimportant. These companies continue to spend heavily on models, hardware and technical development. What changed is that R&D now sits beside manufacturing, deployment, fleet expansion and customer rollout in many of the market's biggest financings.

We cannot calculate a market-wide "R&D versus commercialization" split because use of funds is not disclosed consistently enough. But taken together with the later-stage shift and the much larger follow-on rounds, the company evidence points strongly toward a market entering a scaling phase.

So what really changed in Physical AI funding over the last 12 months?

Physical AI has become a more mature funding market: broader in funded companies, far deeper at the top and increasingly focused on turning proven robotics and autonomy platforms into large operating businesses.

As seen above, the spectacular rise in total dollars gives too much weight to megarounds. Once we strip those out, the smaller-round pool looks almost flat. The real transformation happened above the early funding layer, where Series A, Series B and later-stage companies can now raise amounts that were exceptional one year earlier.

The market also became less friendly to new entrants. First financings declined despite rising overall activity, while follow-ons absorbed most of the additional capital. Existing winners benefited far more than companies entering the funded ecosystem for the first time.

Drones and Mobile Autonomy stands out as the strongest category because it gained both deals and capital. Humanoids also moved forward, mainly through much larger checks tied increasingly to production and deployment. Autonomous Vehicles attracted extraordinary capital without producing more deals, which makes that segment look mature and concentrated rather than broadly revived.

Geographically, Europe added meaningful breadth and China moved toward bigger rounds. Investor participation widened too, while strategic investors became more important mainly through the size and industrial relevance of the financings they joined.

The misleading headline would be that Physical AI funding rose 242% because the whole market suddenly became three times stronger. What actually happened is more interesting: the market built a much larger scaling layer for autonomy and robotics companies that investors now believe are ready to manufacture, deploy and commercialize at serious scale.