Maven Robotics Secures $100M to Scale Industrial Automation in Warehouses

Abdelrahman Amr

Last updated 30-09-2026

4 min

Maven Robotics raised $100 million to scale factory and warehouse robots.

UAE-backed Shorooq and Presight joined, adding a clear MENA “physical AI” angle.

Its robots handle palletising and totes, with claimed “uptime above 99%”.

The funding will build 250 third-generation units and a fourth-generation platform.

Maven wants “general-purpose” machines, but scaling reliably remains the real challenge.

US industrial robotics startup Maven Robotics has pulled in $100 million in Series A funding, with UAE-based Shorooq and Presight among the backers as the company pushes to scale production and widen what its machines can do in factories and warehouses. The round was led by RoboStrategy, with LocalGlobe, Vine Ventures and XTX Ventures also taking part. Shorooq and Presight joined through the Presight–Shorooq AI fund and Shorooq’s Bedaya funds, although the size of their individual cheques was not shared.

Founded in 2024 and based in Santa Clara, Maven is building autonomous robotic systems for logistics and manufacturing settings. Its early focus has been on mixed-case palletising and tote handling — in simple words, the sorting, moving and stacking of different products inside industrial sites. Maven estimates those two use cases alone represent an $80 billion market, which is no small thing.

The company says its systems combine hardware, software and AI across both single robots and larger fleets. The bigger ambition is to build machines that learn from real operations while still delivering the reliability industrial clients usually demand. That reliability bit matters a lot, because warehouse operators are not keen on flashy tech that becomes a bit of a faff the moment volumes go up. Maven claims its robots can run for up to 16 hours a day at customer sites, with uptime above 99%, though those figures have not been independently verified.

The new funding is meant to help Maven manufacture 250 units of its third-generation robot and begin work on a fourth-generation platform. It also plans to move beyond palletising into more complex material-handling and assembly tasks, opening the door for its robots to take on a wider spread of jobs across warehouses and production lines. I reckon that is where the real test starts: it is one thing to do one task spot on, and another to expand into messy real-world workflows without losing consistency.

Maven only emerged from stealth earlier in September 2026, when it announced the Series A. Since then, the involvement of Shorooq and Presight has added a MENA angle that Arageek readers will likely notice straight away. Around the region, there has been plenty of talk about “physical AI” lately — meaning AI used inside machines that interact with the real world, not only inside software dashboards — and this deal fits neatly into that trend.

Bilal Baloch, Partner at Shorooq, said, “The first wave of AI reshaped how we work with information; the next will reshape how the physical economy runs.” Presight CEO Thomas Pramotedham also said the investment reflects the company’s focus on AI systems that can deliver measurable business results.

Maven’s approach is not about building a different robot for every single warehouse problem. Instead, the startup is trying to create a more general-purpose industrial robotics system that can grow into new applications as it gathers more operational data. Co-founder and CEO Hamza Derbas said, “We’re not in the race to build the biggest model—we’re in the race to solve industrial labour and make this work possible at the scale the world needs.” He also said Shorooq and Presight can offer more than money, including access to computing resources, data and enterprise relationships.

That said, scaling industrial robotics is never a walk in the park. A robot that works well in one controlled environment can struggle when it faces new layouts, new products and tighter industrial demands. And believe it or not, this is something founders across MENA talk about too when they move from tidy pilot projects to proper commercial deployment. I’ve seen startup operators in the region get chuffed to bits by early traction, only to learn that keeping performance stable at scale is the harder game, well... I mean, always.

The Maven investment also ties back to a broader strategy. In 2025, Presight and Shorooq launched Presight–Shorooq Fund I, targeting $100 million in global AI investments, and this deal was made through that vehicle as well as Shorooq’s Bedaya funds. For the UAE investors, it strengthens their growing links to deep-tech and AI businesses beyond the Gulf.

For now, Maven’s next job is quite clear: build its third-generation fleet, design the next platform, and prove that broader industrial automation can work relably at scale. If it manages that, this round could look very smart indeed.

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