Data
~$14 billion in robotics VC. Where it went — and where it didn't.
Numbers verified against Crunchbase as of May 2026. If figures have shifted since publication, please email mati@physical-ai-safety.com — corrections within 7 days.
Robotics venture capital in 2025 totaled approximately $14 billion globally, according to Crunchbase data published in February 2026. That represents a 70% increase over 2024 and eclipses even the peak funding year of 2021. The money is real. The question is where it went.
Humanoid robots captured over 40% of all 2024-2025 robotics funding, according to New Market Pitch's analysis. This is a category that barely existed in 2022. Figure AI raised $1 billion in a single Series C round. Apptronik raised $935 million in Series A funding. Skild AI raised $500 million. 1X Technologies (formerly Halodi Robotics) has been pursuing up to $1 billion. The humanoid thesis — robots that can work in environments designed for humans — is where the majority of capital is flowing.
Defense technology hit $8.5 billion in 2025, an all-time high and more than double the previous year. Anduril, Saronic, Helsing, and Skydio are among the most heavily funded companies. F-Prime Capital's State of Robotics report noted that defense robotics now accounts for 63% of total robotics investment when including M&A activity.
Surgical and medical robotics attracted over $800 million. CMR Surgical raised $200 million. Neuralink raised $650 million. While Neuralink is primarily a brain-computer interface company, it uses surgical robots for implantation and is developing technology for robotic prosthetic limb control.
Warehouse and logistics automation attracted consistent funding across all years from 2022 to 2025, with investors increasingly focusing on next-generation picking and manipulation rather than basic goods-to-person systems.
Autonomous vehicles saw a declining share of robotics funding — from representing 70% in 2019 to just 30% by 2023 — as the market shifted from horizontal platforms to vertical, application-specific robotics.
Agricultural robotics remains capital-efficient, with companies like Ecorobotix and SwarmFarm scaling on relatively modest funding compared to their humanoid peers.
And safety infrastructure? I searched Crunchbase, PitchBook, OECD, and F-Prime's comprehensive State of Robotics report. "Robot safety infrastructure" does not appear as a funding category in any of them. Not as a subcategory. Not as a tag. Not as a footnote.
This is the same observation from my Post #6 in April — but now with real category data. $14 billion went to what the robot can do. The investment category for what happens when the robot fails has not been defined yet. The absence of the category is itself the data point.