AI firms Modal Labs, Instinct and SiMa.ai secure $750m, $1bn and $150m rounds. Recent funding rounds saw Modal Labs raise $750 million, Instinct $1 billion and SiMa.ai $150 million, while robotics and biotech startups also secured sizable investments. Artificial intelligence. Modal Labs, the New York-based serverless AI inference platform founded in 2021 by Erik Bernhardsson and Akshat Bubna, is close to completing a $750 million financing led by Accel that would lift its post-money valuation to about $15.75 billion, up from $4.65 billion after its May 2026 Series C [1][6]. The round, reported at a valuation near $16 billion in other outlets, more than triples the company's worth in four months and follows revenue growth to over $300 million annualised as of May 2026 [4]. Modal's service lets developers run Python functions and AI workloads on GPUs and CPUs across multiple clouds without managing servers, counting customers such as Cognition, Suno, Ramp and Substack among its roughly 150-person workforce [1]. Edge-AI chipmaker SiMa.ai closed a $150 million Series C at a $1.45 billion post-money valuation, co-led by Fidelity Management & Research and Amplify Partners, with participation from Dell Technologies Capital, Point72, StepStone Group and several other investors [3][8]. The company, founded in 2018 by former Xilinx executive Krishna Rangasayee, reported a four-fold revenue increase from 2024 to 2025 and is now scaling its second-generation Modalix chip and the Palette Neat software environment for drones, humanoid robots and automotive applications. Funds will be used to bring a next-generation hardware design delivering 1,000 dense TOPS to market in early 2028 and to expand the open-source software stack that lets developers specify speed, power and accuracy constraints. SiMa.ai positions its pin-compatible module as a drop-in alternative to Nvidia's Jetson line, aiming to capture a share of the projected $50 trillion physical-AI market. Robotics. Feather Robotics raised $7.6 million in a pre-seed SAFE round led by Gradient Ventures, with participation from Builder Capital, Geometry, Virgo VC and London-listed SEED Innovations, whose earlier $1 million investment converts at a $60 million valuation cap [2]. The East Palo Alto startup offers a modular humanoid platform priced at $29,990, paired with an SDK that lets developers load any AI model, and has already generated over $1 million in revenue from manufacturing and food-service customers. Feather's rapid development cycle - first prototype in two months and first shipped unit in nine - aims to establish an open hardware standard for physical-intelligence robots, positioning the company against vertically integrated rivals such as Tesla and Figure AI. India-based Unbox Robotics secured $28 million in a mixed primary-secondary round led by ICICI Venture, with participation from RedStart Labs, F-Prime, 3one4 Capital, Navam Capital, Force Ventures and existing backers [5]. The funding will expand the engineering team, accelerate product development and broaden market reach in India and overseas, while part of the secondary capital provides liquidity to employees. Unbox builds modular, AI-driven mobile robots for parcel and package sorting, deploying around 500 units across Europe and preparing its first large-scale U.S. rollout with a third-party logistics provider. The company's swarm-intelligence software enables coordinated robot fleets, and it pursues additional opportunities in pharma manufacturing. Humanoid-robot specialist Figure AI, valued at $39 billion after its September 2025 Series C, reported that its robot headcount surpassed its human staff for the first time in June 2026, with roughly 740 Figure units deployed against about 660 employees [7]. The firm's flagship Figure 03, launched in October 2025, is a 5-foot-8, 135-pound biped equipped with the in-house Helix vision-language-action model and is currently used in BMW's Spartanburg plant for vehicle assembly. Figure generates revenue through a robot-as-a-service model priced around $3,200 per robot per month and bulk purchases near $89,000 per unit, though exact figures are undisclosed. Investors in the latest round include Parkway Venture Capital, Brookfield, Nvidia, Qualcomm Ventures and other strategic capital partners.

Lucid's Head of Global Logistics leaves for humanoid robot maker Figure. Andrew Bailey, Lucid's Head of Global Logistics, has left the EV maker to join humanoid robot developer Figure AI, he said on Thursday. "After an incredible chapter, I'm closing out my time at Lucid Motors and beginning a new one," Bailey wrote in a LinkedIn post. "Now, I'm excited to share that I've joined Figure AI as Head of Commercial Logistics," he added. Bailey worked at Lucid for over three and a half years. His Figure role started in September. Logistics organisation. Bailey joined Lucid in January 2023 as Director of Materials Management and became Head of Global Logistics in July that year, his profile shows. In that role, he led "a global logistics organization of 800+ across customs, transportation, material planning, packaging engineering, warehouse, and lineside operations," according to his profile. He was also responsible for the unit's full profit and loss and for inventory. As Director of Materials Management, Bailey oversaw material planning, flow engineering and internal logistics to "ensure zero production downtime in Lucid's build-to-order electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing environment," the profile says. He was based at Lucid's factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. The Saudi-backed carmaker currently sells two models, the Air sedan and the Gravity SUV, both built at the Casa Grande plant. A third model, the midsize Cosmos crossover, was previously scheduled to start production at Lucid's AMP-2 plant in Saudi Arabia in late 2026. "AMP-2 will be ready for production in early 2027 and ready to run midsize production in the second half of the year," Chief Executive Officer Silvio Napoli said on the company's second-quarter earnings call. "We will not repeat the mistakes of the past by bringing a product to market before it is ready," he added. Bailey said in his LinkedIn post that he is "incredibly grateful for my years at Lucid and for the opportunity to help build and scale the logistics organization through a period of tremendous growth and change." Before Lucid, Bailey spent 10 years at German automotive supplier Dräxlmaier Group, according to his profile. From November 2016 to September 2022, he was Plant Manager. There, he launched and led a plant producing interior components for luxury carmakers, with more than 400 staff across engineering, logistics, quality and production. Figure robots. At Figure, Bailey said he would "help build the logistics and deployment organization supporting one of the most ambitious technologies being developed today: humanoid robotics." Figure, founded in 2022 by Chief Executive Officer Brett Adcock, raised more than $1 billion at a $39 billion post-money valuation exactly a year ago. The company said in April it had delivered more than 350 Figure 03 robots from its BotQ factory and lifted output from one robot a day to one an hour in 120 days, according to a company update. In May, Figure signed an agreement with Catalyst Brands, owner of brands including JCPenney, Aéropostale and Brooks Brothers, to deploy humanoids starting at its distribution centre in Reno, Nevada, the company said. The Figure 03 also began work at BMW's plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in June, Figure said. There, the robot handles sequencing, picking parts and placing them in the correct slots for the assembly line while moving heavy carts, in the plant's assembly and logistics hall. Its predecessor, the Figure 02, loaded sheet-metal parts into a welding fixture at the same plant during an 11-month deployment that contributed to the production of more than 30,000 BMW X3s, Figure said in November 2025. Leaner Lucid. Bailey's exit comes as Lucid cuts costs and inventory under Napoli, who was named incoming CEO in April and took over on June 1. In June, Lucid said it would cut about 18% of its US workforce, with annualised savings of about $158 million, and eliminated the Chief Operating Officer role previously held by Marc Winterhoff. The departure of Winterhoff, who served as interim CEO for over a year, was exclusively reported by EV and later confirmed by Lucid in an SEC filing. "On June 22, 2026, the Company announced that Marc Winterhoff, Chief Operating Officer, has departed the Company, effective immediately following the elimination of the Chief Operating Officer position," Lucid announced. The company said it had deliberately reduced second-quarter production to 4,774 vehicles to "align output with anticipated demand, convert inventory into deliveries and cash," it said in August. Deliveries in the quarter totalled 3,953 units. Third quarter figures are expected to be released early in October. Lucid expects inventory reduction to contribute about $600 million to $800 million of the $1.4 billion in cash flow improvements it has identified for 2026. Lucid has also seen a string of senior departures since late 2023. Emad Dlala, Senior VP of Engineering and Software, left in June after nearly 11 years at the company. Cláudio Afonso founded CARBA in early 2021 and launched the news blog EV later that year.