Meet The Swiss Start-Up Taking On The Tech Giants In Robotics And AI

The race to develop “humanoid robots” powered by artificial intelligence is accelerating, with firms such as Figure, Sanctuary and 1X, often backed by big tech sector names, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. However, one seemingly unlikely competitor in this race is Mimic, a Swiss start-up that is today announcing a $2.5 million fund-raise of its own.

Unlike its competitors, which are staffed by Google alumni or backed by investors including Open AI and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Mimic is flying below the radar. Launched earlier this year, the company was spun out of a research project at ETH Zurich university. Its founders, Elvis Nava, Stefan Weirich, Stephan-Daniel Graver and Benedick Foray all worked on the original research.