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RoboForce raises $52M to scale Physical AI Robo-Labor. New capital accelerates Physical AI development and commercial rollout as RoboForce transitions from R&D to scaled deployments MILPITAS, Calif.-(BUSINESS WIRE)-RoboForce, a pioneer in Physical AI-powered Robo-Labor, today announced it has secured a $52 million oversubscribed funding round, bringing the total raised to $67 million. The round was led by YZi Labs (a $10 billion fund) with participation from Jerry Yang (co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc.), who join existing investors Myron Scholes (Nobel Laureate economist), Gary Rieschel (Founding Partner of Qiming Ventures), Carnegie Mellon University, and beyond. The new capital will accelerate the company's next-generation robot foundation model, scale general-purpose Physical AI robots, and drive manufacturing readiness for commercial deployment. ""Robo-Labor is essential for work that is dull, dirty, and dangerous. Our mission is to elevate humans into safer, higher value roles while robots take on the most demanding industrial tasks." - Leo Ma, Founder & CEO of RoboForce. Share Industrial operators are facing a persistent and growing gap: essential work that is physically demanding, repetitive, and safety-critical still depends on increasingly scarce human labor, slowing project timelines and increasing safety risk. RoboForce's solution is designed to take on the high-risk, tedious work across demanding industrial environments such as utility-scale solar, data centers, mining, shipping, manufacturing, and logistics. "Robo-Labor is essential for work that is dull, dirty, and dangerous," said Leo Ma, Founder & CEO of RoboForce. "This problem centers on human workers' availability, cost, and safety, and its impact spans across most critical industrial sectors. Our mission is to elevate humans into safer, higher value roles while robots take on the most demanding industrial tasks." The capital raise strengthens RoboForce's execution across three core pillars, accelerating the expansion of its Physical AI platform and Robo-Labor deployments: * Powering its robot foundation model and AI data flywheel, integrating real-world fleet data and high-fidelity simulation to build a closed-loop system that compounds intelligence across deployments. * Scaling manufacturing and advancing the Physical AI robot platform, ramping production and strengthening global supply chain operations to ensure reliable performance in harsh, dynamic industrial environments. * Driving commercialization and revenue growth, moving active pilot programs toward production deployments and establishing recurring revenue across critical industrial sectors. RoboForce is building an advanced physical AI foundation model and robotics stack in collaboration with NVIDIA, leveraging NVIDIA's end-to-end computing and simulation technologies as its AI backbone. Powered by NVIDIA Jetson Thor at the edge, NVIDIA Isaac Sim and NVIDIA Isaac Lab open frameworks for simulation and robot learning, NVIDIA Cosmos for synthetic data generation, and NVIDIA OSMO for cloud-to-edge orchestration, RoboForce is creating a continuous data flywheel that accelerates policy learning and enables reliable, scalable deployment in complex industrial environments. About RoboForce RoboForce is building the future of Physical AI - scalable, deployable Robo-Labor designed for demanding industrial environments. Founded in 2023 by experts from CMU, UMich, Amazon Robotics, Google, Waymo, Cruise, Tesla Robotics, ABB, and Apple. RoboForce is backed by YZi Labs, Myron Scholes, Gary Rieschel, Jerry Yang, Carnegie Mellon University, and beyond. To learn more about RoboForce, visit roboforce.ai.

YZi Labs led a $52 million funding round for RoboForce, a developer of industrial AI robots. 16 Mar, 2026 byDropsCapital Join Its Socials YZi Labs led a $52 million funding round for RoboForce, a Silicon Valley startup developing robots powered by Physical AI for industrial applications. Managing Partner Ella Zhang has joined the company's board of directors. About the project: RoboForce is developing the TITAN robot for use in extreme environments - solar farms, data centers, mining, and logistics. The system offers millimeter-level precision and autonomously performs tasks for which there is a labor shortage. The company has received letters of intent for the delivery of over 11,000 robots and is actively transitioning from pilot projects to industrial scale. Connection to NVIDIA: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang highlighted RoboForce at the GTC 2025 conference, calling TITAN a breakthrough. The company works closely with NVIDIA, using Jetson Thor, Isaac Sim, Cosmos, and OSMO for training and deploying robots. OpenSea has postponed the launch of the SEA token due to unfavorable market conditions. 16 Mar, 2026 byDropsCapital Join Its Socials The NFT marketplace OpenSea has postponed the launch of its long-awaited SEA token, originally scheduled for March 30. Co-founder Devin Finzer explained the decision as a desire to ensure a higher-quality launch. "A delay is a delay. I won't sugarcoat it," Finzer wrote on X. The OpenSea Foundation decided that SEA "launches only once," and the extra time will help meet the community's expectations. Changes for users: * End of the rewards program (the current wave is the last) * Refund of platform fees for traders in waves 3-6 (optional, if "Treasures" are declined) * 0% trading fee on tokens for 60 days starting March 31 New launch date: The team will announce a new timeline only when it can provide a clear schedule. "We have huge ambitions, and we're here for the long haul. I'm very particular about delivering a launch worthy of this community," emphasized Fintzer. Messari has carried out mass layoffs and replaced its CEO as part of its transition to AI. 16 Mar, 2026 byDropsCapital Join Its Socials The analytics platform Messari has announced a leadership change and staff reductions as part of the company's strategic transition to an AI-first model. Management changes: * CEO Eric Turner has stepped down but will remain as an advisor * CTO Diran Lee has been named the new CEO following consultations with the board of directors * A round of layoffs has taken place (the exact number has not been disclosed) "This transition involves a difficult decision: we have parted ways with many colleagues who helped make Messari what it is today," Lee wrote on X. The restructuring aims to position Messari as an AI-first company serving institutional clients through research and AI products. Richard teng (CEO of Binance) has denied rumors of $1.7 billion in transfers to Iranian entities and layoffs at Binance. 16 Mar, 2026 byDropsCapital Join Its Socials Binance has issued a response to a series of media reports alleging that the exchange transferred $1.7 billion to Iranian entities subject to sanctions, fired employees for attempting to investigate violations, and blocked internal audits. According to Binance, the situation is different: the funds did not originate or end on the exchange but passed through numerous intermediary wallets. The company claims that only about $126 million of the amount in question ultimately reached wallets with Iranian ties, of which $24.1 million went to wallets linked to the IRGC. The exchange states that it identified the suspicious activity itself during its investigation, froze the involved accounts, and shared the information with law enforcement. According to the company, the dismissals of compliance staff were not related to the investigations. Binance also cites the following statistics: - a 96.8% reduction in the impact of sanctions, - processing of over 71,000 requests from law enforcement in 2025, - $131 million in illicit funds seized. Bybit has listed Backpack (BP) on its pre-market. Total value at stake (TVL): $345 million. 16 Mar, 2026 byDropsCapital Join Its Socials BP on Bybit * The TGE will take place on March 23. * Backpack is an exchange with a multi-chain wallet. * $37 million raised from Placeholder, Wintermute, Jump, Multicoin, and others. South Korean exchange Bithumb has been partially banned from operating and fined $25 million. 16 Mar, 2026 byDropsCapital Join Its Socials A South Korean regulator has imposed a partial six-month suspension of operations on Bithumb and a fine of 36.8 billion won (~$25 million). The grounds for the action were violations of the Act on the Regulation of Specific Financial Transactions (equivalent to AML legislation). The exchange's CEO received an official reprimand, and the person responsible for reporting was suspended from duty for six months. According to the FIU, during inspections in 2024-2025 covering the country's five largest exchanges (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, Gopax), approximately 6.65 million violations were identified at Bithumb: ~3.55 million for failure to comply with KYC procedures, and ~3.04 million for violations related to transaction limits.