An Australian startup just secured $23 million in funding to bring its colorful social humanoid robots to the US.
Melbourne-based Andromeda Robotics is now valued at $100 million, according to reports. Led by 25-year-old founder/CEO Grace Brown, the robotics firm has generated headlines as it’s pushed its flagship humanoid, named Abi, into Australia’s aged-care sector over the past few years.
Brown began developing Abi as a personal project to cope with isolation during COVID-19 lockdowns while studying mechatronics engineering at the University of Melbourne. She had been building robots as a hobby since she was 15.
After graduating from university, the engineer/entrepreneur launched Andromeda in 2022. The startup secured early funding from Galileo Ventures, and by November 2023, started initial trials in Victoria aged-care homes. They raised $3 million in June 2024 to scale Abi’s deployment within Australia.
For the most part, the Land Down Under has stayed out of the global humanoid robotics race. Outside of Andromeda, the country’s humanoids are mostly limited to academic research projects like Guroo from the University of Queensland and StUWArt at the University of Western Australia (UWA).
Andromeda raised $29 million during its latest Series A fundraising round led by San Francisco VC firm Forerunner, which focuses on early-stage consumer-facing products. Some of its famous backed companies include Warby Parker, Dollar Shave Club, Glossier, him & hers, Chime, and Faire.
Andromeda has grown to a staff about 30. Its stated mission is to create the world’s first truly empathetic companion robot. They want their robots to serve as best friends rather than just assistants.
“Emotional intelligence is the missing layer of modern robotics and we are building it into every pixel, every sensor, every interaction,” Brown said during a speech at Forerunner’s recent Human in the Loop conference.
With its new funding, Andromeda plans to scale production, fast-track its waitlist, and expand into the North American aging care market. In a LinkedIn video message, Brown said before the latest round the startup had raised around $4 million, which was used to bring Abi to market and commercialize it. She said they’ve already reached $3 million in revenue.
The US and Australia have similarly growing aging populations, each with about 17% of its people older than 65. In both countries, the rapid growth of seniors 85 and above is the biggest pressure point for healthcare and eldercare systems.
“In aged care, people don’t realize it, but like four out of 10 people never receive visitors from friends or family, ever,” Brown said in an interview with Australia TV. “So day after day, they’re spending time alone in their rooms just by themselves.”
She said no one is forced to interact with Abi, but she “can replace some of that loneliness or some of that isolation that they would have with an interaction or an activity or something where they’d otherwise be alone.”
Standing 120 cm (~4 feet), Abi’s cartoon-like appearance is inspired by Disney characters, especially Baymax from Big Hero 6 (2014). Brown says Andromeda reached out to around 40 nursing homes in Melbourne for feedback during the design process.
The colorful, lightweight bot is built from 3D-printed parts. It can speak more than 90 languages with its ChatGPT-powered conversational artificial intelligence. Equipped with facial recognition and memory, Abi can recall past interactions from days or even months ago and adapt its personality to different residents.
It expresses emotions with animations via its screen-based face. The wheeled humanoid navigates autonomously with its vision system in its chest.
Each Abi unit reportedly costs around $10,000 to build, with customer pricing based on the number of robots and support services needed. Andromeda plans to scale from 8 to 100 units per month, grow its team, and roll out the next-generation iteration of the robot called Genesis Abi.
Andromeda is entering the US market amid intensifying competition.
In San Francisco, a trio of young entrepreneurs recently launched Quo Labs to rapidly scale production of its social caretaker robots. They’re developing the third iteration of their AI powered robot, named Sam, for senior citizens.
The wheeled robot navigates autonomously and immediately notifies caregivers if something needs their attention. The team accelerated the robot’s development at Founders, Inc., a hardware first startup incubator.
The startup says it’s racing toward 1,000 units and $1 million in revenue through rapid iteration instead of spending years in research and development. Over time, they plan to roll out higherend models with arms that can perform tasks.
In Paris, Enchanted Tools is moving its anime inspired flagship humanoid, Mirokai, to mass deployment with an emphasis on healthcare and eldercare settings. The startup was launched in 2021 by Jérôme Monceaux, who helped develop two of the most widely deployed humanoids ever, the popular research bot Nao and the social service robot Pepper. They’re aiming for pricing around $30,000.
In China, Shanghai-based Fourier has opened pre-orders for its so-called humanoid carebot, the GR-3. Standing about 165 cm (5 feet 5 inches), it’s designed to be a social companion with emotional intelligence. Weighing 55 kg (121 lb), it features a soft touch outer shell and boasts 55 degrees of freedom (DoF).
Fourier is targeting use cases like elderly care and companionship, physical rehabilitation, and assistive care. Fourier has not publicly revealed pricing, but it’s believed to be in the six figures.
There’s also a growing array of robotics firms that are positioning their hyper-realistic androids for caregiving. Among them is Las Vegas-based Realbotix, whose lifelike companion robots range in price from $20K to more than $175K.