Foundry Robotics raises $100 million Series A to run an AI-driven assembly factory

What Foundry Robotics announced

Foundry Robotics said on 28 October 2026 that it has raised an oversubscribed $100 million Series A led by Marlinspike Partners. Khosla Ventures and Red Glass Ventures returned from earlier rounds, SE Ventures, Wing VC and Axiom Ventures joined, and Hanabi and Zero Shot Fund also took part. The company did not disclose its valuation, its total funding to date or its revenue.

Foundry describes the plan as building America's first autonomous factory for assembly. That label is the company's own claim. What the release does describe concretely is the business model: Foundry builds and operates factories for complex assembly, with AI-powered robotic cells working alongside manufacturing specialists. Customers buy production as a service. Foundry owns and runs the plant and says it can take a customer from design to production in weeks, without the customer investing in new production lines or retooling.

The company says it has expanded its manufacturing footprint twentyfold, to a 130,000 square foot facility in Emeryville, California. The Series A will pay for building out that site, deploying AI models in real manufacturing and growing its research, engineering and factory operations teams.

Who is behind it and who buys from it

Chief executive Adarsh Kulkarni was employee number four at Ghost Robotics, which builds legged robots for the US military, and later the first head of robotics at Scale AI, according to the release and coverage of the round. Co-founder Emmanuel Lamacchia was previously program manager for the Tesla Model Y. That mix of robotics research and high-volume automotive production is the core of Foundry's pitch.

Foundry says it is already shipping to paying customers across energy, telecom, autonomous vehicles and defense, with coverage citing products such as drones and satellites. It has not named any customers, so the scale of that business cannot be checked. Kulkarni framed the round around domestic supply: "Defense and industrial equipment manufacturers urgently need more domestic assembly capacity, and Foundry is delivering."

The defense framing also explains the product mix. Drones, satellites and similar defense and industrial hardware are often built in low or medium volumes with frequent design changes, where building a dedicated assembly line rarely pays off for the customer. Foundry's offer is to absorb that setup work in a shared plant and switch its robotic cells between products. The company has not published throughput, defect rates or how many products the Emeryville site runs at once.

Why it matters and what to watch

Many AI robotics companies sell robots or robot models to manufacturers, such as Physical Intelligence with its API for robot foundation models. Foundry takes the opposite route: it keeps the robots and sells finished assembly. That lets it control the whole cell, collect its own production data and improve its AI models on real work, but it also ties the company to the capital costs and margins of running a factory.

The round arrives as North American robot demand picks up: the Association for Advancing Automation reported on 28 October that third-quarter robot orders rose 24.8% in units on a year earlier. Whether AI-driven cells can switch between products fast enough to make contract assembly profitable is still unproven at scale.

Things to watch include named customers, production volumes from the Emeryville site, any defense contracts that can be confirmed in public records, and whether Foundry opens a second plant. The round is recorded in our AI funding tracker.

Questions people ask

How much did Foundry Robotics raise?

Foundry Robotics raised an oversubscribed $100 million Series A led by Marlinspike Partners, announced on 28 October 2026. It did not disclose a valuation.

What does Foundry Robotics make?

It assembles complex hardware for customers in its own factory with AI-powered robotic cells and manufacturing staff. It says it ships to paying customers in energy, telecom, autonomous vehicles and defense.

Where is Foundry Robotics based?

In Emeryville, California, where it says it now has a 130,000 square foot facility.

Sources

1. Foundry Robotics Raises $100 Million Series A to Build America's First Autonomous Factory for Assembly (Foundry Robotics (Business Wire), 28 Oct 2026)
2. Foundry Robotics raises $100 million to build America's first autonomous factory for assembly (Robotics and Automation News, 31 Oct 2026)
3. Foundry Robotics raises $100M Series A to build autonomous factory for assembly (Robotics 24/7, 28 Oct 2026)
4. Foundry Robotics Raises $100M in Series A Funding to Expand Autonomous Assembly for Defense, Industry (The AI Insider, 29 Oct 2026)