Europe’s new robotics unicorn: Germany’s RobCo hits $1B valuation

-Munich-based RobCo has surpassed a $1 billion valuation through an employee secondary share sale, doubling its valuation in just nine months.

-Existing investors including Sequoia, Lightspeed, Greenfield, Kindred, Lingotto and Promus Ventures participated alongside new backers Cherry Ventures and European Tech Collective.

-RobCo is preparing to launch Alfie, its autonomous industrial robot, commercially in 2027 as it doubles down on the US manufacturing market.

RobCo has surpassed a $1 billion valuation through a secondary share sale that allows long-standing employees to realise part of the value they helped create, while bringing new investment into the Munich-founded autonomous robotics company.

The transaction combines new investment into the business with a secondary share sale that gives long-standing employees the opportunity to realise part of the value they have helped create since RobCo’s founding.

Existing investors Sequoia, Lightspeed, Greenfield, Kindred, Lingotto and Promus Ventures participated alongside new investors including Cherry Ventures and European Tech Collective, a group of founders behind some of Europe’s most successful technology companies.

This follows RobCo’s $100 million Series C announced in January 2026, co-led by Lightspeed and Lingotto, to expand its Physical AI platform and US operations.

“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,” said Roman Hölzl, Co-founder and CEO of RobCo. “There was strong demand to invest in RobCo, so we used that moment to strengthen the company.”

From Munich to US factory floors

RobCo was founded in 2020 by Roman Hölzl, Paul Maroldt, and Constantin Dresel, RobCo is building autonomous industrial robotics around a Robotics-as-a-Service model, allowing manufacturers to deploy automation without significant upfront investment.

At the centre of the company’s next phase is Alfie, a robot designed to combine perception, reasoning and execution for high-mix, unstructured and safety-critical industrial work.

RobCo plans to commercially launch Alfie at RobCoN, its first annual summit, in Munich on March 4, 2027.

The company is already expanding rapidly in the US, its fastest-growing market. Customer operations now span more than a dozen states, supported by manufacturing and assembly operations in Austin, Texas, and a laboratory in San Francisco. Hölzl has also relocated to the US to lead the expansion.

A robotics market getting bigger

The opportunity is expanding alongside RobCo’s ambitions. The International Federation of Robotics says factories worldwide installed 603,000 industrial robots in 2025, up 11%, while the global operational stock reached 5.079 million robots, up 9%. The IFR expects installations to rise another 9% to 655,000 units in 2026.

RobCo faces increasingly well-funded rivals targeting differe