An F1 aerodynamicist just raised $55m to teach factory robots, using footage of people doing chores

This article was published on July 16, 2026 Bercan Kilic left Red Bull Racing at the height of its dominance. His startup’s answer to the robot data problem is to film 20,000 people mopping floors. Bercan Kilic got his dream job in 2023, designing aerodynamics for Red Bull Racing while it was winning everything. He found the engineering magnificent and the point of it thin. His Munich startup, microagi, has now raised $55m, which it says is the largest seed round a German company has secured. Hummingbird led, with Northzone, LocalGlobe, Village Global, and redalpine participating. The valuation was not disclosed. What microagi sells is narrower than the funding suggests, and more interesting for it. It does not build robots, and it does not build models. It records workers using cameras and sensor-equipped gloves, then uses the footage to teach existing robotics models to do a specific job inside a specific customer’s factory. That is unfashionable in a sector where the money has gone to hardware, from Walden Robotics’ $300m launch to All3’s legged construction robots. microagi sells the layer between somebody else’s robot and somebody else’s model. Five companies are collecting da

Jul 16, 2026 → Jul 16, 2026