Eka Robotics raises $150 million to scale robot VFA model

Eka Robotics is betting that the path to general-purpose robots runs through physics rather than human demonstration data. The company argues that mastering physics through simulation and reinforcement learning lets a robot build task intuition the way a person does, jointly reasoning about what it sees and the forces it feels. That contrasts with approaches that train robots by copying human-recorded motions, which Eka and its backers say cannot reach the success rates and speeds needed for real deployments. Eka says its simulation setup can generate thousands of hours of robot experience in minutes, varying objects, environments, and physical conditions, and that transferring this to the real world is becoming less of a barrier.

The Series A brings in Andreessen Horowitz and F-Prime as leads, alongside continued backing from seed investors Obvious Ventures and E14 Fund and new participation from Samsung Next and several Fortune 500 strategics. a16z general partner Raghu Raghuram called Eka's approach the first he has seen that solves manipulation with the generality and throughput needed for deployments, while Fine Structure Ventures' Shyam Kamadolli said breaking free from dependence on human demonstrations is what the hardest problem in robotics requires. Eka, founded in 2024 and based in Cambridge, Mass., said the funding will help it scale its technology and customer deployments.