Here’s how much funding robotics companies raised in June

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Robotics funding reached $2.1 billion in June 2023 as a result of 51 investments (See Table 1 below or download Table 1). This brings the year-to-date investment total for the robotics industry to approximately $6.1 billion.

Table 1: June 2023 Robotics Funding and Investment

Companies based in the United States and China once again received the most number of rounds, 20 and 8, respectively (see Figure 1). However, firms based in Israel attracted the greatest amount of investment buoyed by $1.6 billion going to Mobileye, a maker of vision-based sensors for driver assist and autonomous driving applications. Similarly, Israel-based Percepto, a developer of autonomous drone technology for surveillance and inspections, attracted $67 million in Series C funding.

Providers of drones, drone-enabling technologies and analytic services continue to attract the attention of the investment community. Other examples include United Aircraft ($168M), B GARAGE ($20M) and ideaForge ($7M). Surgical robotics developers and their enabling technologies also continue to secure sizable funding rounds. For example, Aibo Medical Robot secured a $14M Series A investment, while Virtual Incision and THINK Surgical received investments of $10.9M and $5M, respectively.

Figure 1: June 2023 Robotics Investment by Country

June 2023 robotics investments were atypical in that most funding fell under the aegis of ‘Other’, a catchall descriptor for investments that do not include the typical stages of funding that businesses go through before their initial public offering (ex. Seed rounds followed by Series A, B, C, D and E funding). Mobileye’s post-IPO secondary round skewed the June 2023 results.

Figure 2: June 2023 Robotics Funding Amounts by Investment Type

Figure 3: June 2023 Robotics Funding Amounts by Investment Number and Amounts

Editor’s note: What defines robotics investments? The answer to this simple question is central in any attempt to quantify them with some degree of rigor. To make investment analyses consistent, repeatable, and valuable, it is critical to wring out as much subjectivity as possible during the evaluation process. This begins with a definition of terms and a description of assumptions.

Investors and investing
Investment should come from venture capital firms, corporate investment groups, angel investors, and other sources. Friends-and-family investments, government/non-governmental agency grants, and crowd-sourced funding are excluded.

Robotics and intelligent systems companies
Robotics companies must generate or expect to generate revenue from the production of robotics products (that sense, analyze, and act in the physical world), hardware or software subsystems and enabling technologies for robots, or services supporting robotics devices. For this analysis, autonomous vehicles (including technologies that support autonomous driving) and drones are considered robots, while 3D printers, CNC systems, and various types of “hard” automation are not.

Companies that are “robotic” in name only, or use the term “robot” to describe products and services that do not enable or support devices acting in the physical world, are excluded. For example, this includes “software robots” and robotic process automation. Many firms have multiple locations in different countries. Company locations given in the analysis are based on the publicly listed headquarters in legal documents, press releases, etc.

Verification
Funding information is collected from a number of public and private sources. These include press releases from corporations and investment groups, corporate briefings, market research firms, and association and industry publications. In addition, information comes from sessions at conferences and seminars, as well as during private interviews with industry representatives, investors, and others. Unverifiable investments are excluded and estimates are made where investment amounts are not provided or are unclear.