YC DATA · 6,287 COMPANIES · OCTOBER 2, 2026
FORMATION · FIRST SURFACED FALL 2026

Robotics Companies

Return to Signal
ACCELERATING86% confidenceObserved October 2, 2026Source: Description cluster · description-onlyCurrent batch — provisional
The count
1.73×

12/615 → 25/739; +1.43 percentage points of formation share.

S12S18W21S24W26F26
The companies behind the signal — 25
Fall 2026
Lambda Robotics

Robotics for AI Infrastructure. Lambda Robotics builds and deploys robots for the infrastructure powering frontier AI.

Fall 2026
Pendulum Robotics

Quick-turn, purpose-built motors & actuators for all. We design and manufacture high-mix drone motors and robotic actuators in LA. DJI, Apple, and Ford don't settle for OTS components. Likewise, the teams that win the Western robotics market will build seamless machines from tightly integrated software and hardware. Pendulum Robotics designs motors and actuators around your robot's unique form factor and mission - then we rapidly bring them to life with proprietary software and tooling geared for high-mix machining and assembly. Our first factory in LA can create thousands of motors per month up to 200mm OD. We're doing for motion components what 3D printing has done for structural components. Hardware teams that can build and iterate at the speed of software will create elegant, reliable, ROI-positive robots and win massive markets.

Fall 2026
Shepherd Robotics

Robots for high skilled labor powering AI infrastructure. Shepherd Robotics builds general purpose robots for skilled physical work across AI infrastructure and advanced manufacturing. Our robots are powered by robot foundation models and use modular, flexible hardware designed to adapt to different environments and tasks. We train our systems on a combination of real world and simulation data so they can learn complex manipulation skills and generalize across workflows. We also provide integration into customers’ existing workflows, starting with data center construction and operations, electrical manufacturing and testing, and electronics manufacturing, where traditional automation struggles with variability, dexterity, and changing environments.

Fall 2026
Deploy

The generalist robot deployment company.. Deploy's core belief is that robots should be useful. Getting a generalist robot to do real work is fundamentally the same problem across industries. We build everything between the model and the task to bring generalist robots to the businesses that actually need them.

Fall 2026
Asim

Enable robots to operate safely in the real world..

Summer 2026
Shiraz AI

Robots that learn on the job. We deploy robots that learn new tasks from a single human demonstration in the factory. We're starting in contract manufacturing, where lines change every week and both traditional automation and today's VLAs fall over. Our founding team has 20+ years of experience in robotics. Navid was part of the core team that productized Spot at Boston Dynamics and led manipulation projects there. Before that, he was at Rethink Robotics. Mojtaba led whole-body control and manipulation efforts at Amazon Robotics and was a Research Assistant Professor at Northwestern University.

Summer 2026
Waddle Labs

Agents for robotics control..

Summer 2026
Cosmic Robotics

Autonomous construction on Earth and beyond. Our mission is to build a city on Mars. Cosmic-1, the first equipment in our fleet, is an autonomous robot capable of heavy-lift manipulation. Its been deployed on some of the largest solar farms in the US, more than doubling labor productivity across tens of thousands of panel installs. We're scaling in solar, expanding in data centers, and building lunar construction robotics under contract with NASA.

Summer 2026
Nori

sub-$2000 humanoid robot you can teach to do anything. We manufacture Nori: A sub-$2000 bimanual mobile manipulator that can clean rooms, restock shelves, and fold clothes. Nori can handle basic tasks out of the box, and its software lets anyone teach Nori to automate work specific to their home or business. Nori aims to solve the robotics data bottleneck. By deploying affordable robots to customers around the world, we can gather the diverse data required to train the next generation of generalist robotic policies. Every user of Nori makes Nori smarter. Since launching 6 weeks ago we have already deployed our first robot and have over $350k+ in sales. We can bring general-purpose robotics to homes and businesses that could never afford it before. There are 132.7 million households and 8.4 million employer business locations in the U.S. At $1,688 per robot, selling just one Nori to 0.5%

Summer 2026
Libra Robotics

Robotic crews for large-scale infrastructure construction. We’re building collaborative robotic crews for large-scale infrastructure projects, including solar farms and data centers. 002C: “002A, 5.3 mm left.” 002B: “002A, you’re running low. Next pallet is on the way.” 002C: “Am I clear to come in?” 002A: “Aligned. Panel released. You’re clear.” 002C: “Fastening.” 002B: “Next load arriving now.” This isn’t a human crew talking. It’s three robots building a utility-scale solar farm together. Our AI control system enables specialized robots to collaborate, learn reusable construction skills, like alignment, fastening, and manipulation, and transfer them across workflows, from solar farms to data centers. 🚧 🦺

Inside Robotics Companies

Manufacturing and Robotics

A primary internal company segment within Robotics Companies, derived deterministically from the shared yc industry “Manufacturing and Robotics”. This is a classification of current window members, not a causal layer or a separate time trend.

Other / unclassified

Measured-window members of Robotics Companies that could not be assigned to a narrower shared YC tag or industry without forcing a classification.

Outside corroboration — does anyone else see this?

No comparable outside activity is connected yet.

Related formations
Manufacturing and Robotics

47 completed-batch companies belong to both Robotics Companies and Manufacturing and Robotics, versus 1.7 expected by chance (27.4× enrichment; false-discovery-adjusted q=1.0e-58). This is a statistically distinctive co-membership, not a causal or containment claim.

Robotic System

28 completed-batch companies belong to both Robotics Companies and Robotic System, versus 0.4 expected by chance (71.8× enrichment; false-discovery-adjusted q=2.6e-48). This is a statistically distinctive co-membership, not a causal or containment claim.

Hard Tech

15 completed-batch companies belong to both Robotics Companies and Hard Tech, versus 1.5 expected by chance (9.8× enrichment; false-discovery-adjusted q=1.0e-9). This is a statistically distinctive co-membership, not a causal or containment claim.

Hardware

12 completed-batch companies belong to both Robotics Companies and Hardware, versus 1.7 expected by chance (7.0× enrichment; false-discovery-adjusted q=0.0000052). This is a statistically distinctive co-membership, not a causal or containment claim.

Industrial

4 completed-batch companies belong to both Robotics Companies and Industrial, versus 0.4 expected by chance (10.6× enrichment; false-discovery-adjusted q=0.015). This is a statistically distinctive co-membership, not a causal or containment claim.

Manufacturing

6 completed-batch companies belong to both Robotics Companies and Manufacturing, versus 1.1 expected by chance (5.5× enrichment; false-discovery-adjusted q=0.021). This is a statistically distinctive co-membership, not a causal or containment claim.

Similarly named categories — not necessarily the same thing

These share a word with “Robotics Companies” but are tracked as separate categories. The real overlap below is the actual share of Robotics Companies’s companies also found in that category — not a guess.

Citation

Cambrian Signal, “Robotics Companies,” publication yc-2026-10-02-semantic-v8, snapshot October 2, 2026.
cambrian.jafar.com/formation/robotics-companies