Apptronik

Apptronik is an Austin-based humanoid robotics company and University of Texas spinout that raised $935 million at a $5 billion valuation in February 2026, backed by Google, Mercedes-Benz, B Capital, PEAK6, AT&T Ventures, John Deere, and Qatar Investment Authority. Its Apollo humanoid robot is powered by Google DeepMind Gemini 3 and Gemini Robotics AI, enabling it to perform diverse real-world tasks without environment-specific retraining — a key differentiator from training-intensive approaches.

Apollo is commercially deployed at Mercedes-Benz factories delivering assembly kits to production line workers, GXO Logistics, and Jabil. The Google DeepMind partnership gives Apollo the same foundation model AI capabilities powering Google own robotics research — a generalist intelligence layer trained across diverse robot types and tasks.

Apollo weighs 73 kg with a 25 kg payload capacity and features a modular hardware design allowing individual joint replacement, reducing maintenance costs versus competitors requiring full robot replacement. Founded 2016, Apptronik is using its new capital to expand in Austin and prepare Apollo for mass production.