RobCo, the industrial robotics company founded in Munich in 2020, has passed a $1 billion valuation, according to the company.
The valuation comes from a secondary share sale, in which employees sell existing shares to investors rather than the company issuing new ones.
RobCo said the deal also brings new investment into the business, but it did not disclose how much was raised or how many shares changed hands.
Private companies valued at $1 billion or more are commonly called unicorns.
Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed, Greenfield, Kindred, Lingotto and Promus Ventures are taking part.
New investors include Cherry Ventures and European Tech Collective, a group of founders behind some of Europe's most successful technology companies.
Roman Hölzl, RobCo's co-founder and chief executive, said the sale lets long-standing staff realise part of the value they helped create.
He added that demand to invest in the company was strong, so it used the moment to strengthen its position.
“This is an important moment for RobCo, and I cannot think of a better way to mark it than by giving some of the people who built this company the opportunity to realize part of the value they created,” Hölzl said.
“There was strong demand to invest in RobCo, so we used that moment to strengthen the company. A billion-dollar valuation is an incredible milestone, but we’re much more excited about what comes next: bringing the next generation of autonomous industrial robotics to factory floors.”
Alfie launch set for March
RobCo will commercially launch Alfie, a robot built for autonomous industrial work, at its first annual summit in Munich on 4 March 2027.
The company says Alfie combines perception, reasoning and execution to handle high-mix, unstructured and safety-critical tasks that traditional automation has struggled with.
High-mix work means a factory handles many different products in small batches, which makes it hard to automate with machines built for one repetitive job.
US expansion
The United States is RobCo's fastest-growing market, with customer operations in more than a dozen states.
The company runs manufacturing and assembly operations in Austin, Texas, and a laboratory in San Francisco.
Hölzl has relocated to the US to lead the expansion personally.
Luciana Lixandru, a partner at Sequoia, said the firm believes the company's progress so far is "still the beginning".
RobCo sells its systems through a Robotics-as-a-Service model, under which customers pay a subscription with no upfront investment.
