Robotics startup Eka Robotics said it has raised $150 million in a Series A round at a post-money valuation of $1.45 billion, co-led by a16z and F-Prime Capital.
The company, founded in 2025 by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja, focuses on developing Vision-Force-Action (VFA) models and dexterous robotic grippers. Eka said its VFA model is a robot foundation model that, unlike vision-language-action (VLA) models, places greater emphasis on force feedback when robots contact objects. It combines visual perception, force sensing and motion control so robots can adjust actions in real time based on contact conditions.
For training, Eka uses a combination of physics simulation and large-scale reinforcement learning. Simulators model the different forces a robot may encounter when grasping objects, creating reinforcement-learning environments in which robots accumulate operating experience virtually. The company said this approach can generate thousands of hours of robot operating experience in minutes, covering different objects, environments and physical conditions.
Eka has also developed its own dexterous gripper, which it says is more flexible and integrates more force sensors to detect changes in force upon contact.
Agrawal is an associate professor at MIT. He earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, co-founded SafelyYou and has served as an adviser to robotics companies including Tutor Intelligence. Haarnoja previously conducted deep reinforcement learning research at Google Brain and joined Google DeepMind in 2019, where he held roles as research scientist, senior research scientist and staff research scientist, focusing on robotics and reinforcement learning.
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