Imperial professor's robot AI lab raises $40m, UK's largest robotics seed
Ed__Johns · x · 2026-10-27
A new London AI lab, Machenta, has raised a $40m seed round — the largest ever robotics seed in the UK. Founded by Edward Johns, Professor of Robot Learning at Imperial College London, the company builds a foundational model for instant robot learning: show a robot a task once and it learns to do it. The model is trained entirely in simulation, so instead of learning specific tasks it learns how to learn — one real demonstration on unseen objects is enough to pick up a new task instantly.
Related event: London robotics startup Machenta exits stealth with $40M seed round(21 posts)→
More from Venture
- Oracle investor day: 1GW AI site earns ~$80B contract value at ~28% ROI, 3.6-year payback — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-10-30
- Serval raises $150M Series C at $3B valuation led by Sequoia to replace enterprise ITSM — saranormous · 2026-10-30
- SEO roundup: how to rank in Perplexity, an EEAT intervention, commodity content — gaganghotra_ · 2026-10-30
- Phonic launches speech-to-speech model Phonic-1, raises $27.5M Series A — togethercompute · 2026-10-29
- One 'not good enough' Reel generated 100+ leads: creator shares her Instagram data — evielync · 2026-10-29
- Cohere targets CAD $7B Series E at $35.7B valuation, largest round in Canadian startup history — cohere · 2026-10-29