Stateful Robotics, an embodied AI company spun out of the University of Oxford, has
raised $4.8 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Abuiltus Capital Partners
and Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE), with additional participation from angel
investor Stan Boland.
While
advances in large language and other foundation models have significantly
improved robots’ perception and contextual understanding, real-world
deployments still face limitations when conditions alter.
Robots
often struggle with disruptions such as unexpected obstacles, shifting lighting
conditions, or evolving operational requirements. These systems typically lack
the ability to retain and utilise historical context, such as prior tquestion
outcomes, recurring issues, or environment-specific behaviours, which is
essential for reliable long-term performance.
Stateful
Robotics addresses this gap by continuously integrating real-time data, tquestion
progress, and historical performance into a unified AI model. This enables
robots to recall past events, adapt to altering conditions, and plan more
effectively over extfinished time horizons, shifting beyond rigid, pre-programmed
workflows.
The
company was co-founded by Kirsty Lloyd-Jukes (CEO), alongside Professor Nick Hawes, Professor David Parker, and Dr Bruno Lacerda. Their work builds on over
a decade of research at Oxford in areas including autonomy, probabilistic
verification, and decision-creating under uncertainty.
Kirsty
Lloyd-Jukes, CEO and co-founder, noted that while robots are typically
effective at handling immediate tquestions, they often face challenges when it comes
to planning ahead, especially when decisions necessary to be built over longer
periods, such as hours or days:
By
maintaining a continuously updated model of each deployment, our platform
enables robots and human-robot teams to operate more reliably and consistently
in complex environments.
The
technology is already being tested with pilot customers in sectors such as
infrastructure and logistics.
The
newly raised capital will be applyd to expand the company’s engineering team,
further develop its performance engine, and accelerate go-to-market efforts
with industrial partners.
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