Industrial
Maven Robotics, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup founded in 2024, has developed four iterations of its mobile manipulator, raised $100 million, and secured a production contract with its first customer. The company’s robots are currently running 16 hours a day, five days a week, with up to 99% uptime, according to co-founder and CEO Hamza Derbas.
The company’s approach contrasts with humanoid robotics firms that start with a human form factor and work backward to find a problem. “Instead of starting from a robot or specific morphology or even a model, we started from the jobs to be done, down to the dust, the dirt, and the grease on the factory floor,” Derbas told The Robot Report. Maven began by examining industrial labor challenges, noting that there are over half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs in the U.S. alone, a number expected to grow to millions in the coming years.
“Instead of starting from a robot or specific morphology or even a model, we started from the jobs to be done, down to the dust, the dirt, and the grease on the factory floor,”
Maven’s mobile manipulator design is driven by the tasks it needs to perform, not by a predetermined form. The company has moved quickly from early pilots to a production contract, and last month raised Series A funding. Derbas emphasized that the right team, with experience building hard technologies, can activate autonomous labor at scale in industrial environments.
Maven Robotics plans to automate industrial work one task at a time, focusing on practical applications in manufacturing settings. With its current robots already operating at high uptime, the company aims to address the growing labor shortage by deploying its mobile manipulators in factories.
Source: The Robot Report