Mowito, a startup building foundation models for industrial robot arms, has raised $3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Version One Ventures. The round also saw participation from All In Capital, Unisol, iSeed, and a roster of angel investors, including Soumith Chintala of Thinking Machines Lab, Adarsh Kulkarni of Foundry Robotics, Ashish Kulkarni of Coformer.ai, and Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital.
How the Funding Will Be Used
Mowito plans to use the capital to accelerate its expansion into the US market, grow its engineering and go-to-market teams, and scale deployments across automotive and electronics manufacturers globally. Co-founder and CEO Puru Rastogi emphasized that hardware is no longer the bottleneck in manufacturing—software is. “Factory robots shouldn’t need to be reprogrammed every time production changes. We believe robots should learn the same way people do: by observing and repeating,” Rastogi said. “This funding allows us to accelerate that vision, expand globally, and bring Physical AI to more manufacturing environments.”
What Mowito is Building
Founded in 2024, Mowito is developing physical AI models that let industrial robots learn tasks directly from demonstration, eliminating the need for engineers to hand-code every movement. Instead of reprogramming robots each time a production line changes, Mowito’s robots can observe a task once and replicate it with the precision that manufacturing demands. The company operates teams in Bengaluru and Detroit. It already has robots deployed on live manufacturing lines at a Fortune 500 automotive company and one of the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturers, supporting high-precision assembly work across automotive and consumer electronics production.
Why Investors Are Backing the Category
Kushal Bhagia, Partner at All In Capital, noted that manufacturing is entering a phase where AI will fundamentally reshape industrial automation. He pointed to robot programming complexity as one of the biggest structural barriers still facing the sector. Bhagia cited Mowito’s technical depth and early customer validation as reasons for backing the round, positioning the startup to help define the physical AI category as it matures.
The funding arrives amid a broader wave of investor interest in physical and robotics-focused AI startups, as manufacturers seek ways to automate precision tasks without the lengthy reprogramming cycles required by traditional industrial robotics.
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