This startup of $ 30 million built a robot factory the size of a dog crate that learns by viewing people | Techcrunch

While many robotics companies build robots at human size, or work to automate entire factories, Microfactoric Instead, try to think big by building small.

Microfactory, based in San Francisco, built a general purpose-table production kit that has about the size of the dog crate of my Siberian Husky. This compact factory comprises two robot arms and can be trained by human demonstration, as well as via AI.

“Robots for general purposes are good, but it is not necessary [to] Be Humanoid, “said Igor Kulakov, the co-founder and CEO of Microfactory, in an interview with Techcrunch.” We have decided to completely re-design robots that will still be general goal, but not in human form, and in this way it can be done much easier, much easier, in hardware and on the AI ​​side. ”

Instead of selling individual robot arms, the Microfactory system comes as an enclosed but transparent workstation, allowing users to view the production process in real time. The compact factory-in-a-box is designed for precision tasks such as printed circuit board, soldering component and cable routering. Users can train the robots by physically guiding the poor by complex movements-a-hands-on approach that Kulakov says it works faster than traditional AI programming for complex production seals.

“It usually takes a few hours, but in this way the robot understands much better what it should do,” said Kulakov. “When you hire people, we still have to spend time, such as a week or something, to instruct these people and then supervise their work. A production company, they already have to spend this time and resources, and it will be much easier to train a model and make it work in this way.”

Kulakov’s experience with traditional production helped cause the idea behind Microfactory.

He and his co-founder, Viktor Petrenko, Runden Bitlighter, a production company that made portable lighting equipment for photographers. Kulakov said it was difficult to train new employees about how to correctly complete the production process. When the progress in AI made it possible to automate this type of work, they decided to jump out of the chance.

Kulakov and Petrenko launched Microfactory in 2024. It took them about five months to build their prototype. Now the company has hundreds of performances of customers who want to use the machines for various applications, including the assembly of electronics and even the processing of snails sent to France for Escargot.

Microfactory has just picked up a pre-Seed financing round of $ 1.5 million, including investors such as managers of the AI ​​company Hugging Face and Investor entrepreneur Marine Raviker. De Ronde appreciates the young startup with a value of $ 30 million after the money.

Kulakov said that the company intends to use the financing to build and send its units. The company is currently converting its prototype into a commercial product that it hopes to be sent in about two months.

The company is also planning to make some recruitment and to continue to improve its technology, including the AI ​​models that run under the hood.

“Our growth is related to building hardware, so we set the goal to increase it by 10 times every year,” said Kulakov. “In the first year we want to produce 1,000 robots, [about] Three a day, and we have the opportunity to do this. Than, [we want to] Make more and more productions. ”