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<p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="legendSpanClass">SAN FRANCISCO</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="legendSpanClass">Aug. 5, 2026</span> /PRNewswire/ -- <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="https://edge.prnewswire.com/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=4745838-1&amp;h=3832739261&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.avatarrobotics.com%2F&amp;a=Avatar+Robotics" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Avatar Robotics</a>, a startup building the unlimited workforce for industrial labor, today announced it has raised a $6.5 million Seed round led by AlleyCorp, alongside a pre-seed led by defy.vc, and participation from Headline, Henry Ford III, Refashiond, Paul Vogel, Jack Huffard, and Samuel Udotong.</p>
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                    <img xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" src="https://mmx.prnewswire.com/media/MS1963857/NEF00016_22.jpg?id=OA2824410" title="Avatar Robotics founder Colin Webb, CEO (center), Hamid Farzaneh, Ph.D., Founding Engineer (left), and Nenye Anagbogu, Chief Screwdriver (right)." alt="Avatar Robotics founder Colin Webb, CEO (center), Hamid Farzaneh, Ph.D., Founding Engineer (left), and Nenye Anagbogu, Chief Screwdriver (right)."></img>
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<p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Avatar Robotics addresses one of the largest structural constraints facing the U.S. economy: persistent labor shortages across warehousing, logistics, and manufacturing. As companies reshore operations and demand faster fulfillment, many facilities struggle to hire and retain enough workers for physically demanding or repetitive jobs.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Avatar unleashes a new category of industrial infrastructure that combines robotics, remote human operators, and AI-driven autonomy. Its humanoid robots can perform high-value warehouse and manufacturing workflows such as picking, packing, kitting, sorting, cycle counting, and material movement — delivering flexible labor capacity 24/7.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Since launching in December 2025, Avatar Robotics has packed, sorted, and helped ship more than <b xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">900,000 products</b>, including for a leading global beauty retailer, via robots deployed across live customer environments. The company has also begun a post-pilot expansion with a multi-billion-dollar warehouse operator to support sorting and picking workflows, with additional deployments underway.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">&#34;The United States has a massive labor shortage, and the warehouses and factories that power daily life are struggling to hire enough workers,&#34; said Colin Webb, Founder and CEO of Avatar Robotics. &#34;For the first time, affordable robotics, high-speed connectivity, and AI-driven autonomy make it possible to create a new kind of workforce. Avatar Robotics gives businesses access to scalable industrial labor, while enabling workers to operate fleets of robots remotely from safer and more comfortable environments. Over time, this can dramatically lower the cost of goods and expand economic opportunity to people anywhere in the world.&#34;</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Unlike traditional automation systems that require rigid workflows and expensive upfront integration, Avatar is plug-n-play, using remote operators to complete tasks reliably from day one. While operating, Avatar Robots continuously learn from the data they generate, enabling robotic foundation models to bring intelligent automation to every task.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The result is a new kind of robotics infrastructure for the physical economy. Customers get labor capacity immediately. Avatar Robotics produces the data needed to improve autonomy, where eventually one warehouse operator will command entire fleets of robots. In the future, Avatar will power an ever-growing suite of autonomous workflows for today&#39;s highly manual, complex tasks.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> &#34;Avatar Robotics has built strong partnerships with their initial customers -- and is already delivering meaningful value in real workflows -- through their human-in-the-loop system, which is performing at a level competitive with skilled human operators,&#34; said Brannon Jones, Principal at AlleyCorp. &#34;In doing so, Avatar Robotics has also generated large datasets of robot control data, which the industry currently lacks and will help to inform foundation models and enable more scalable labor supply.&#34;</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">&#34;Colin&#39;s vision for Avatar instantly captivated me,&#34; said Amy Yin, Partner, defy.vc. &#34;The path to full robotic autonomy will require both better hardware and massive amounts of real-world data. Avatar&#39;s approach is incredibly clever: use remote human operators to bridge the gap today while improving autonomy with every task completed. I believe that model can help Avatar build one of the largest humanoid robot fleets in the world.&#34;</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The new capital will be used to expand deployments, accelerate autonomy software development, scale robot fleets, and grow the company&#39;s engineering and operations teams.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Avatar Robotics&#39; team includes engineers and operators from Cruise, Apple, Tesla, Intuitive Surgical, and Unity, with research backgrounds from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The founder and CEO, Colin Webb, graduated from MIT (delivering the commencement address), and has developed various autonomous solutions ranging from AI powered drones and self-driving cars, to founding a recently acquired AI startup with cofounder Nenye Anagbogu, who has teamed up with Webb once again at Avatar.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Avatar Robotics envisions scaling to millions of robots operating across warehouses, factories, mines, farms, and future infrastructure projects — allowing businesses of any size to access industrial-grade labor on demand, and enabling workers globally to control fleet-scale physical systems virtually.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">To get in touch with the Avatar Robotics team, reach out at <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="mailto:hello@avatarrobotics.com" rel="nofollow" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">hello@avatarrobotics.com</a>.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><b xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">About Avatar Robotics</b></p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Avatar Robotics is building the unlimited workforce for industrial labor. Avatar combines humanoid robots, a global fleet of robot operators, and AI autonomy to help businesses scale warehouse, logistics, and manufacturing operations with affordable, flexible, always-available labor. Businesses with tedious, hard-to-automate tasks including kitting, sorting, picking, packing, rework and assembly tasks can tap into Avatar&#39;s overnight scalable labor, capable of 24/7 work. Avatar robots are currently fulfilling thousands of big brand retail products daily.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Avatar Robotics is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Learn more at <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="https://edge.prnewswire.com/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=4745838-1&amp;h=3560039617&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.avatarrobotics.com%2F&amp;a=www.avatarrobotics.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.avatarrobotics.com</a></p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><b xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">About AlleyCorp</b></p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">AlleyCorp is a New York-based venture capital firm that incubates and invests in transformative companies across healthcare, AI, enterprise software, consumer tech, deep tech, and more.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">As one of the most active early-stage investors in New York, AlleyCorp focuses on investing at the incubation, pre–seed, seed, and Series A stages. Founded by serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, AlleyCorp&#39;s past incubations have included MongoDB (NASDAQ:<a class="ticker" href="https://www.benzinga.com/quote/MDB">MDB</a>), Business Insider, Zola, Gilt Groupe, Radical AI, and Transcend Therapeutics. Learn more at alleycorp.com.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><b xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">About defy.vc</b></p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">defy.vc is a Silicon Valley–based early-stage venture capital firm, currently investing out of defy III. With $700M under management across its funds, defy takes an artisanal approach to company building—backing founders with conviction and providing hands-on support from inception through exit. Our team blends decades of venture experience with entrepreneurial and operating expertise, partnering with the boldest founders shaping the future. Connect with defy at <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="https://defy.vc" rel="nofollow">https://defy.vc</a> and @defyvc.</p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Media Contact<br xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"></br>Kelsey Cullen, KCPR<br xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"></br><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="mailto:kelsey@kcpr.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">kelsey@kcpr.com</a><br xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"></br>650.438.1063</p>
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<p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" id="PURL"><img xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" title="Cision" width="12" height="12" alt="Cision" src="https://edge.prnewswire.com/c/img/favicon.png?sn=SF19329&amp;sd=2026-08-05"></img> View original content to download multimedia:<a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" id="PRNURL" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/avatar-robotics-raises-6-5-million-seed-to-build-the-unlimited-industrial-workforce-302843349.html" target="_blank">https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/avatar-robotics-raises-6-5-million-seed-to-build-the-unlimited-industrial-workforce-302843349.html</a></p><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">SOURCE Avatar Robotics</p>

Avatar Robotics Raises $6.5 Million Seed to Build the Unlimited Industrial Workforce

Avatar Robotics raises seed funding; potential upside for automation ecosystems

<section class="insight" data-version="1">
  <section data-block="information">
    <h3>Information</h3>
    <p>&lt;p xmlns=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml&quot;&gt;&lt;span xmlns=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml&quot; class=&quot;legendSpan...</p>
  </section>

  <section data-block="ai-summary-paragraph">
    <h3>AI Summary</h3>
    <p>Avatar Robotics secured a $6.5 million seed round led by AlleyCorp, with a pre-seed from defy.vc. The funds will accelerate deployments, advance autonomy software, and scale robot fleets across warehouses and factories. The mention of AlleyCorp’s past MDB incubations underscores MDB&#039;s proximity to venture networks that could indirectly benefit MDB from rising automation demand.</p>
  </section>

  <section data-block="ai-summary-bullets">
    <h3>Key Points</h3>
    <ul><li>Avatar Robotics seed round raises $6.5M; AlleyCorp leads, defy.vc pre-seed.</li><li>Addresses U.S. labor shortages with humanoid robots; 900,000+ products shipped since Dec 2025.</li><li>Plug-n-play system uses remote operators; expansion with a multi-billion-dollar warehouse operator.</li><li>AlleyCorp previously incubated MongoDB (MDB); signals MDB exposure in venture ecosystem.</li></ul>
  </section>

  <section data-block="companies-mentioned">
    <h3>Companies Mentioned</h3>
    <ul><li><strong>Avatar Robotics (N/A)</strong>: Private robotics startup; seed round of $6.5M led by AlleyCorp; expanding warehouse deployments.</li><li><strong>MongoDB (MDB)</strong>: Past AlleyCorp incubatee; potential indirect upside from venture ecosystem engagement.</li><li><strong>AlleyCorp (N/A)</strong>: Lead investor in Avatar Robotics seed; notable incubator with MDB past portfolio.</li><li><strong>defy.vc (N/A)</strong>: Pre-seed investor; active in seed-stage tech; no direct MDB exposure.</li></ul>
  </section>

  <section data-block="category">
    <h3>Industry News</h3>
    <p>Category: Industry News. The piece highlights venture funding in automation hardware/software, signaling broader AI/automation adoption trends that could influence enterprise tech demand and indirectly affect MDB&#039;s market environment.</p>
  </section>

  <section data-block="market-moving">
    <h3>Market-Moving</h3>
    <ul><li>Automation funding momentum supports broader tech capex, potentially lifting MDB-related sentiment.</li><li>AlleyCorp&#039;s MDB track record may draw investor attention to MDB.</li><li>No direct MDB earnings or guidance; impact remains indirect.</li><li>Avatar&#039;s growth could increase data demand for AI/ML platforms MDB serves.</li></ul>
  </section>

  <section data-block="key-facts">
    <h3>Key Facts</h3>
    <ul><li>Avatar Robotics seed: $6.5M on Aug 5, 2026.</li><li>Lead investor: AlleyCorp; pre-seed: defy.vc.</li><li>Shipped 900,000+ products since Dec 2025.</li><li>Plug-n-play humanoid robotics for 24/7 ops.</li><li>AlleyCorp portfolio includes MongoDB (MDB).</li></ul>
  </section>

  <section data-block="trading-thesis">
    <h3>Trading Thesis</h3>
    <p>MDB could trend higher over 3–6 months on AI/automation spending and venture ecosystem activity.</p>
  </section>
</section>


<article>
  <header>
    <h2>Avatar Robotics Raises $6.5 Million Seed to Build the Unlimited Industrial Workforce</h2>
  </header>

  <section id="opening" aria-labelledby="opening-title">
    <p id="opening-title">
      Avatar Robotics, the San Francisco-based startup building the unlimited workforce for industrial labor, today announced it has raised a <strong>$6.5 million Seed</strong> round led by <strong>AlleyCorp</strong>, alongside a pre-seed led by <strong>defy.vc</strong>, with participation from <strong>Headline</strong>, <strong>Henry Ford III</strong>, <strong>Refashiond</strong>, <strong>Paul Vogel</strong>, <strong>Jack Huffard</strong>, and <strong>Samuel Udotong</strong>.
    </p>
    <p>
      The funds will support expansion of its humanoid robotics platform and accelerate its AI-driven autonomy and remote human-operator model as the company addresses persistent labor shortages across warehousing, logistics, and manufacturing.
    </p>
    <figure>
      <img src="https://mmx.prnewswire.com/media/MS1963857/NEF00016_22.jpg?id=OA2824410" alt="Avatar Robotics founder Colin Webb, CEO (center), Hamid Farzaneh, Ph.D., Founding Engineer (left), and Nenye Anagbogu, Chief Screwdriver (right).">
    </figure>
  </section>

  <section id="funding-details" aria-labelledby="funding-details-title">
    <h2 id="funding-details-title">Funding Details</h2>
    <ul>
      <li><strong>Seed round</strong> of <strong>$6.5 million</strong> led by <strong>AlleyCorp</strong></li>
      <li>Alongside a <strong>pre-seed</strong> led by <strong>defy.vc</strong></li>
      <li>Participation from <strong>Headline</strong>, <strong>Henry Ford III</strong>, <strong>Refashiond</strong>, <strong>Paul Vogel</strong>, <strong>Jack Huffard</strong>, and <strong>Samuel Udotong</strong></li>
    </ul>
  </section>

  <section id="product-and-market" aria-labelledby="product-and-market-title">
    <h2 id="product-and-market-title">What Avatar Robotics Builds</h2>
    <p><em>Avatar unleashes a new category of industrial infrastructure</em> that combines robotics, remote human operators, and AI-driven autonomy. Its humanoid robots can perform high-value warehouse and manufacturing workflows such as picking, packing, kitting, sorting, cycle counting, and material movement — delivering flexible labor capacity <strong>24/7</strong>.</p>
    <p>Since launching in December 2025, Avatar Robotics has packed, sorted, and helped ship more than <strong>900,000 products</strong>, including for a leading global beauty retailer, via robots deployed across live customer environments. The company has also begun a post-pilot expansion with a multi-billion-dollar warehouse operator to support sorting and picking workflows, with additional deployments underway.</p>
  </section>

  <section id="founder-vision" aria-labelledby="founder-vision-title">
    <h2 id="founder-vision-title">Leadership Vision and Company Strategy</h2>
    <p>“The United States has a massive labor shortage, and the warehouses and factories that power daily life are struggling to hire enough workers,” said Colin Webb, Founder and CEO of Avatar Robotics. “For the first time, affordable robotics, high-speed connectivity, and AI-driven autonomy make it possible to create a new kind of workforce. Avatar Robotics gives businesses access to scalable industrial labor, while enabling workers to operate fleets of robots remotely from safer and more comfortable environments. Over time, this can dramatically lower the cost of goods and expand economic opportunity to people anywhere in the world.”</p>
    <p>Unlike traditional automation systems that require rigid workflows and expensive upfront integration, Avatar is plug-n-play, using remote operators to complete tasks reliably from day one. While operating, Avatar Robots continuously learn from the data they generate, enabling robotic foundation models to bring intelligent automation to every task.</p>
    <p>The result is a new kind of robotics infrastructure for the physical economy. Customers get labor capacity immediately. Avatar Robotics produces the data needed to improve autonomy, where eventually one warehouse operator will command entire fleets of robots. In the future, Avatar will power an ever-growing suite of autonomous workflows for today’s highly manual, complex tasks.</p>
  </section>

  <section id="investor-quotes" aria-labelledby="investor-quotes-title">
    <h2 id="investor-quotes-title">Investor and Partner Perspectives</h2>
    <p>“Avatar Robotics has built strong partnerships with their initial customers -- and is already delivering meaningful value in real workflows -- through their human-in-the-loop system, which is performing at a level competitive with skilled human operators,” said Brannon Jones, Principal at AlleyCorp. “In doing so, Avatar Robotics has also generated large datasets of robot control data, which the industry currently lacks and will help to inform foundation models and enable more scalable labor supply.”</p>
    <p>“Colin's vision for Avatar instantly captivated me,” said Amy Yin, Partner, defy.vc. “The path to full robotic autonomy will require both better hardware and massive amounts of real-world data. Avatar's approach is incredibly clever: use remote human operators to bridge the gap today while improving autonomy with every task completed. I believe that model can help Avatar build one of the largest humanoid robot fleets in the world.”</p>
  </section>

  <section id="capital-use" aria-labelledby="capital-use-title">
    <h2 id="capital-use-title">Use of New Capital</h2>
    <p>The new capital will be used to expand deployments, accelerate autonomy software development, scale robot fleets, and grow the company's engineering and operations teams.</p>
  </section>

  <section id="team-background" aria-labelledby="team-background-title">
    <h2 id="team-background-title">Team and Background</h2>
    <p>Avatar Robotics' team includes engineers and operators from Cruise, Apple, Tesla, Intuitive Surgical, and Unity, with research backgrounds from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The founder and CEO, Colin Webb, graduated from MIT (delivering the commencement address), and has developed various autonomous solutions ranging from AI powered drones and self-driving cars, to founding a recently acquired AI startup with cofounder Nenye Anagbogu, who has teamed up with Webb once again at Avatar.</p>
  </section>

  <section id="market-context" aria-labelledby="market-context-title">
    <h2 id="market-context-title">Market Context: MDB and Robotics Funding Trends</h2>
    <p>In technology market coverage, <strong>MDB</strong>—the stock ticker for MongoDB—frequently serves as a reference point for AI and automation trends. Avatar Robotics’s Seed round aligns with a broader investor appetite for scalable labor solutions and autonomous technologies.</p>
  </section>

  <section id="about" aria-labelledby="about-title">
    <h2 id="about-title">About Avatar Robotics</h2>
    <p>Avatar Robotics is building the unlimited workforce for industrial labor. Avatar combines humanoid robots, a global fleet of robot operators, and AI autonomy to help businesses scale warehouse, logistics, and manufacturing operations with affordable, flexible, always-available labor. Businesses with tedious, hard-to-automate tasks including kitting, sorting, picking, packing, rework and assembly tasks can tap into Avatar's overnight scalable labor, capable of 24/7 work. Avatar robots are currently fulfilling thousands of big brand retail products daily.</p>
    <p>Avatar Robotics is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Learn more at <a href="https://www.avatarrobotics.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.avatarrobotics.com</a></p>
  </section>

  <section id="contact" aria-labelledby="contact-title">
    <h2 id="contact-title">Contact Avatar Robotics</h2>
    <p>To get in touch with the Avatar Robotics team, reach out at <a href="mailto:hello@avatarrobotics.com" rel="nofollow">hello@avatarrobotics.com</a>.</p>
  </section>
</article>

Avatar Robotics secured a $6.5 million seed round led by AlleyCorp, with a pre-seed from defy.vc. The funds will accelerate deployments, advance autonomy software, and scale robot fleets across warehouses and factories. The mention of AlleyCorp’s past MDB incubations underscores MDB's proximity to venture networks that could indirectly benefit MDB from rising automation demand.

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Avatar Robotics Raises $6.5 Million Seed to Build the Unlimited Industrial Workforce

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Key facts

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