Mowito Raises $3 Million to Simplify Industrial Robot Programming

What happened:

Bengaluru-based startup Mowito has secured $3 million for its pre-seed round, led by Version One Ventures, alongside All In Capital, Unisol, iSeed and some angel investors. The new money will be used to scale up the company’s engineering and business operations and expand into the U.S. market, as well as build up its engineering and business team, while at the same time expanding deployments across automotive and electronics manufacturing facilities.

Established in 2024, Mowito is creating what it is calling “Physical AI” models for industrial robots. Unlike conventional coding and robot programming, its technology makes it easy to learn tasks from live demonstrations, which makes the deployment of robots on factory floors easier.

Why it matters:

Programming of industrial robots is not a time-efficient activity and this is taking the robots to an increasing extent into industrial manufacturing. Any modification in product design, assembly procedure or production process may necessitate engineers to reconfigure and rewrite the robot instructions. 

Mowito is seeking to reverse that.

The company says the method helps to minimize setup times and increase the flexibility of automation in production. This may be especially beneficial for manufacturers that have various product lines or regularly switch between them.

Industry context:

Physical AI is ushering in a new era of industrial automation. In contrast to the previous robotics, which emphasized pre-programmed and exact movements, more modern AI-powered systems are now being created to learn, adapt and react flexibly to the real world. As manufacturers seek to automate, there is a growing demand for automation solutions that are quicker to deploy and less specialized to program. This is particularly important given the new dynamics of factory operations due to labour shortages, higher production costs and the demand for greater flexibility.

Mowito says its software is already being used on manufacturing lines at a Fortune 500 automotive company, and, likewise, for precision assembly in consumer electronics manufacturing. The funding demonstrates an increasing interest in the field of AI-powered industrial automation, including those technologies that allow robots to become more accessible and usable in industrial settings.