ChainThink reports that on March 17, Silicon Valley-based industrial robotics company RoboForce announced the closing of a oversubscribed $52 million funding round, bringing its total raised to $67 million. The round was led by YZi Labs, with participation from Jerry Yang, co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo. Existing investors including Nobel laureate Myron Scholes, founding partner of Qiming Venture Partners Gary Rieschel, and Carnegie Mellon University also continued their involvement. The new funds will accelerate the development of the company’s next-generation robotic foundation models, scale general-purpose Physical AI robots, and advance manufacturing capabilities in preparation for commercial deployment.
The industrial sector is currently facing a growing labor shortage: many physically demanding, repetitive, and safety-critical tasks still rely on an increasingly scarce human workforce, leading to extended project timelines and heightened safety risks. RoboForce’s solution is designed to take over these high-risk, monotonous tasks, with applications in industrial environments such as large-scale solar power plants, data centers, mining, shipping, manufacturing, and logistics.