Zurich startup Enact raises $30M to give robots a sense of touch

Enact Intelligence, a Zurich-based startup, has come out of stealth with a $30M pre-seed funding round led by redalpine, Notion Capital, and firstminute capital. Angel investors include Mistral founder Arthur Mensch, Meta AI scientist Yann LeCun, and Path Robotics founder Andrew Lonsberry. According to Sifted, it is the largest pre-seed round ever raised in Switzerland.

The company builds robots that sense force and touch by measuring it inside their motors, rather than relying on separate touch sensors or cameras alone. Founder Manuel Yves Galliker compares this to how people feel tension in their muscles rather than only at their fingertips. He previously led software for 1X's NEO humanoid robot and later worked at robotics lab Physical Intelligence. Enact says the approach can be built on top of existing video models and adapted to work on anything from a simple robotic arm to a full humanoid.

Galliker chose to base the 12-person team, which includes engineers from DeepMind, Amazon Robotics, and Helsing, in Zurich rather than the Bay Area, arguing Silicon Valley lacks robotics and hardware talent. Enact plans to grow its team fivefold by the end of 2027 and is in talks with large European manufacturing, infrastructure, retail, and food-processing companies to deploy its first robots.

Why it matters

Giving robots a reliable, affordable sense of touch could help them handle objects and learn from experience in ways camera-only systems struggle with.

Source: The Next Web