ByAnna Tong,
Forbes Staff.
The heat of the ongoing AI boom has spilled over to a famously difficult hardware space — humanoid robotics. Forbes has learned that a pair of Silicon Valley ventures, each with more than $100 million in funding, have been secretly developing human-shaped machines they hope will some day be able to perform tasks typically executed by people.
The first, Palo Alto-based Rhoda AI, raised a $162.6 million Series A round in April, bringing its total funding raised to $230 million and valuing the company at nearly $1 billion, per Pitchbook. It’s been working on a “general purpose bimanual manipulation platform,” known colloquially as a humanoid robot with two arms, according to documents viewed by Forbes. The company has told people that one of its key innovations is a humanoid capable of heavy lifting, a source familiar with the company’s plans told Forbes. Heavy lifting is a crucial task in many industrial settings, and many of today’s well-known humanoid robots have trouble lifting over 50 pounds while maintaining balance and stability.
Founded by Jagdeep Singh, who was founder and CEO of now public Quantumscape (market cap: $9.65 billion) and Infinera, which was acquired by Nokia for $2.3 billion in 2024, and has been working on Rhoda since 2024, per his LinkedIn. Other founding team members include Stanford professor Gordon Wetzstein and Vincent Clerc, who worked on Softbank’s Pepper humanoid robot, according to the documents. Rhoda declined to comment.
