Dynda Robotics’ eventual goal is to create general-purpose robots based on its foundation models. | Source: Dyna Robotics
Dyna Robotics Inc. yesterday announced that it has closed a $120 million Series A funding round. The developer said it will use the new capital to expand its research and engineering team and accelerate the development of its next-generation foundation model as it works to deliver general-purpose robots in commercial environments.
“A strong foundation model is key to scalable distribution,” said Lindon Gao, co-founder and CEO of Dyna Robotics. “Our models continuously improve with each customer deployment, generating high-quality data. We are observing true generalization as our robot enters new environments; it simply works out of the box, with no additional data.”
The Series A round followed the company’s $23.5 million seed round in March and the launch of the DYNA-1 model. Dyna said this proprietary foundation model can push the performance of robots to more than a 99% success rate in 24 hours of non-stop operation.
After just six months, Dyna reported that its service robots were running 16 hours a day at varied environments including hotels, restaurants, laundromats, and gyms.
A robust foundation model is key to general-purpose robotics, says Dyna
Dyna claimed that its single-weight, general-purpose foundation model can perform diverse daily tasks at commercial scale across varied environments. It has been deployed at multiple customer sites, supporting the model’s generalization and commercial viability as it continues to learn and improve rapidly from on-the-job experience, said the company.
“Our first principle is to design robot foundation models that attain both generalization and performance,” said Jason Ma, a former researcher at Google DeepMind who has focused his career on developing foundation models for robotics. “Scalable real-world robot learning systems need to master and generalize many manipulation skills. To achieve the best performance on complex tasks, Dyna’s foundation models are developed to enable general world understanding while learning from the models’ own experience for rapid online learning.”
Dyna co-founders Gao and York Yang teamed up with Ma after seeing the potential to advance AI through real-world applications firsthand while building Caper AI, which combined software and hardware to bring AI-powered smart carts to retailers worldwide. Their product made rapid advancements as soon as it went into production, and the company exited in 2021 for $350 million.
By combining their experience creating practical, production-ready AI with deep research expertise and building a world-class team of researchers and operators, Dyna said it is building embodied AI robots that are useful for businesses now, using that “on-the-job” experience to build toward artificial general intelligence (AGI).
“Right now, three forces are colliding at once: AI breakthroughs are maturing, hardware is accelerating, and the demand for labor has never been higher. That convergence has created a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Yang. “Dyna has made rapid progress over 12 months, and we believe our ultimate goal, achieving physical AGI, is not far off.”
Investors support drive to embodied intelligence
RoboStrategy, CRV, and First Round Capital led Dyna’s funding round. It also included participation from Salesforce Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Samsung Next, and LG Technology Ventures.
“Dyna’s team and mission bridges research excellence and real-world commercial applications,” said Andrew Kang, CEO of RoboStrategy. “The demand for robotic automation spans almost every industry, and we believe Dyna will be at the forefront in meeting it with their state-of-the-art general-purpose robot foundation model.”
“Dyna Robotics is at the forefront of embodied AI, delivering foundation models that combine generalization and commercial-level performance. We invested in the company from Day 1 and are excited to double down on leading Dyna’s Series A,” added Max Gazor, general partner at CRV. “Lindon, York, and Jason bring together the rare combination of proven entrepreneurial success, deep technical expertise, and the operational know-how to scale AI in the real world.”
“At First Round, we back exceptional founders tackling massive problems, and Dyna Robotics checks every box,” noted Bill Trenchard, partner at First Round Capital. “In just one year, Dyna has pushed the boundaries of embodied AI with unprecedented generalization and commercial-grade performance.”
Editor’s note: RoboBusiness 2025, which will be on Oct. 15 and 16 in Santa Clara, Calif., will feature the Physical AI Forum. Other session tracks will focus on humanoids, enabling technologies, design and development, field robotics, and business.
This year’s RoboBusiness will also feature more than 60 speakers, a startup workshop, the annual Pitchfire competition, and numerous networking opportunities. Over 100 exhibitors on the show floor will showcase their latest enabling technologies, products, and services to help solve your robotics development challenges. Registration is now open.
I like the focus on physical AI and the addition of physical industry events.