Robotics is a fascinating topic. It can be frustrating, too. When I started covering the space nearly 15 years ago, there was a sense that something big was looming, just over the horizon. But roboticists are a pragmatic bunch, offering projects for adoption more than a decade into the future.

There were times in the intervening years when it felt like those goal posts were being pushed back. This stuff is extremely hard to get right, and it’s even harder to make systems robust and repeatable at scale.

But the beginning of the pandemic offered what truly felt like a tangible shift. As everyone not deemed an essential worker was told to stay home, businesses were faced with a problem: how to keep the lights on. Another related problem emerged, as well: how to deliver goods at scale to people who can’t — or don’t want to — leave their homes.

What many outside the sector perhaps didn’t recognize is that the solutions were already here. Amazon’s unending drive to outflank the rest of the world birthed an industry with its 2012 acquisition of Kiva. In March 2020, companies like Locus, 6 River Systems and Fetch were happy to jump in and help warehouses automate.

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Investments began flooding into robotics around this time. Most warehouses aren’t automated, so there’s tremendous room for growth. Categories like construction, agriculture and health care, among others, were very much looking to automate. Robotics was in a nice little bubble when the VC slowdown began, as well, though not even it was immune.

Slowed investments have been compounded by continued economic woes and the recent bank collapses have further shaken confidence. Robotics has always been a tricky sector for investors, after all: It requires a lot of money and continued commitment to bring things to market at scale. Anyone looking to make a quick buck should avoid the category at all costs.

In spite of all that, however, robotics remains vibrant and exciting, and it unquestionably has a bright future of exponential growth ahead. No one can accuse the category of being a hype bubble. It hasn’t entered the hype cycle the way things like crypto and generative AI have.

And there’s not a lot of gray area here. That’s something roboticists love about robots: They work or they don’t. What’s been continually and increasingly proven is that they absolutely do.

It’s been a few years since we conducted a robotics investor survey, but the time in between has arguably been the most important years for the sector. We spoke to 13 of the top robotics VCs to discuss where the category is and what the future looks like.

We spoke with:

Milo Werner, general partner, The Engine
Abe Murray, managing partner, Alley Robotics Ventures
Kelly Chen, partner, DCVC
Neel Mehta, venture investor, G2 Ventures
Oliver Keown, managing director, Intuitive Ventures
Rohit Sharma, partner, True Ventures
Helen Greiner, advisor, Cybernetix Ventures
Kira Noodleman, partner, Bee Ventures
Dayna Grayson, co-founder and general partner, Construct Capital
Paul Willard, partner, Grep
Cyril Ebersweiler, general partner, SOSV
Claire Delaunay, private investor
Peter Barrett, co-founder and general partner, Playground Global

Milo Werner, general partner, The Engine

How is robotics investing different than in previous years? What role have the pandemic, slowing economy and recent bank crisis had on your investments?

Robotics innovation had somewhat plateaued: Capability to innovate was heavily based on a startup’s ability to raise capital. The more money, the better the robotics; think Boston Dynamics. But with the growth of multi-modal AI models, we see a huge opportunity for robotics to become multipurpose because these models enable common sense and require little training. The best example of this is Google’s PaLM-E, which is a generalist robot that takes verbal commands. This is just the tip of the spear and generalist robots are going to become much more common.

What is the next big robotics success story after warehouse/fulfillment?

Basically everything around you will become a robot. The simplest example is autonomous vehicles. These are very advanced robots and have been open to riders since 2018. The labor shortages are g