Apptronik is an Austin-based robotics company building Apollo, a general-purpose humanoid robot designed to work alongside people in manufacturing, logistics and other physically demanding settings. Spun out of the University of Texas at Austin's Human Centered Robotics Lab in 2016, the company grew from custom actuator work for NASA into one of the most heavily funded humanoid robot developers, with commercial pilots at Mercedes-Benz and GXO and an AI partnership with Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics team.
Dexmate is a Santa Clara robotics startup building Vega, a general-purpose mobile robot with high-payload arms, dexterous hands and a foldable torso that reaches over seven feet. Founded in 2024 by a team out of MIT, UCSD and CMU, the company pairs custom hardware with a data-driven 'flywheel' learning approach - combining simulation and real-world data - to tackle dexterous manipulation for logistics, manufacturing, retail and research. Backed by NVIDIA and LG Technology Ventures, Dexmate has opened preorders for Vega at $89,999.
Reflex Robotics builds a wheeled, general-purpose humanoid that does real work on warehouse floors. Founded by MIT alumni with hardware chops from Tesla, Boston Dynamics, Anduril and Oculus, the company designs and ships affordable humanoids that start with a human-in-the-loop and learn their way to autonomy. Their robots are deployed in pilots with GXO and other Fortune 100 logistics operators, with a manufacturing footprint planned in Nuevo Leon, Mexico.
Figure is a Bay Area robotics company building autonomous, general-purpose humanoid robots powered by Helix, its in-house vision-language-action model. Founded by Brett Adcock in 2022, Figure is one of a small handful of companies racing to put commercially viable humanoids inside factories, warehouses and - by late 2026 - homes.