Bengaluru, India: Physical AI startup Mowito has raised USD 3 million in a pre-seed funding round to scale its AI-powered robotics platform for industrial automation and smart manufacturing.
The funding round was led by Version One Ventures, with participation from All In Capital, Unisol and iSeed. The round also saw participation from angel investors including AI researcher Soumith Chintala and founders from companies such as Foundry Robotics, Coformer.ai and Better Capital.
Mowito is developing foundation AI models for industrial robotic arms that allow robots to learn manufacturing tasks through human demonstration instead of traditional programming. The company’s technology is designed to run on standard industrial robot arms, allowing factories to make their existing robotic hardware more adaptive and easier to deploy.
The startup is addressing one of the key challenges in manufacturing automation: the complexity of robot programming. In traditional factory environments, even small changes in product design or assembly lines may require engineers to rewrite control code and reconfigure robotic systems. Mowito aims to simplify this process by enabling robots to observe and repeat human-demonstrated tasks, reducing the need for manual programming.
This approach is part of the emerging field of physical AI, where artificial intelligence systems are trained to understand sensor data, video, movement and real-world interactions. Unlike software-only AI models, physical AI systems are designed to convert learning into real-world actions. For manufacturing, this could improve the flexibility of robots used in assembly, inspection, material handling and electronics production.
Founded in 2024, Mowito operates across Bengaluru and Detroit and serves customers in the automotive and electronics manufacturing sectors. The company said its systems are already being deployed in production environments, including at a Fortune 500 automotive company and a large electronics contract manufacturer.
The fresh funding will be used to expand Mowito’s presence in the United States, strengthen its engineering and go-to-market teams, and scale deployments across automotive and electronics manufacturers. The company will also continue developing its physical AI platform for industrial robotic arms.
The investment comes at a time when manufacturers are increasingly looking for automation systems that are flexible, software-driven and easier to adapt to changing production needs. As global factories move toward smarter production lines, AI-enabled robotics is becoming an important area of innovation.
With its demonstration-led learning approach, Mowito is positioning itself as a deeptech company focused on reducing the software barriers in industrial automation and bringing more intelligence to factory robots.
