Israeli startup Enigma has emerged from stealth with a $71 million Seed funding round to develop artificial intelligence technology for robots, as investors increasingly focus on the challenge of bringing AI capabilities into the physical world.
The round was led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Conviction Partners and technology executives and researchers from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Thinking Machines, xAI and Cognition.
Founded less than a year ago by CEO Jonathan Jacobi and CTO Gal Niv, Enigma is developing foundation AI models for robots, alongside software and interfaces designed to make robotic systems easier to deploy and operate.
Jacobi and Niv served together in Israel’s Unit 8200 military intelligence technology unit. Jacobi previously worked at Microsoft and Check Point and focused on cybersecurity research and AI-driven systems. Niv worked on advanced cybersecurity and technology projects and became one of the youngest cyber operations managers in Unit 8200.
The founders said their experience working on complex cybersecurity and AI systems shaped their view that robotics would become the next major frontier for artificial intelligence.
The company said its goal is to build an AI layer that can power different types of robots and reduce the engineering work currently required to adapt robotic systems for specific environments and tasks.
“AI’s next chapter is moving beyond chatbots and screens into systems that can understand, adapt to, and operate in the physical world,” Jacobi said.
While AI systems have advanced rapidly in areas such as language, coding and image generation, applying AI to the physical world remains a major technological challenge.
Most robotic systems today require significant customization, manual data collection and engineering resources before they can operate reliably outside controlled environments.
Enigma said it has developed new approaches for training AI models for robotics that reduce the need for large amounts of manually collected physical data and allow intelligent systems to operate across different robots and environments.
The company is also developing interfaces that allow users to interact with robots without requiring specialized technical knowledge.
“No matter how good robots get, if they aren’t intuitive enough, not enough people will use them,” Jacobi said.
The funding round reflects growing investor interest in physical AI, a sector that has attracted significant capital as companies search for the next major application of artificial intelligence.
Enigma said it will use the new funding to expand its AI research and engineering teams, increase computing infrastructure and GPU capacity, and accelerate development of its robotics software platform.
The company is already working with partners in industries including entertainment, retail and healthcare, and plans to expand deployments across additional robotic environments.
As part of its launch, Enigma plans to introduce a public platform allowing users to interact with AI-powered robots remotely in real time.
The system will allow users to control robots, interact with physical objects and test how AI models interpret and respond to human instructions.
The company said the project will also help it gather insights into how people naturally interact with robotic systems and use that information to improve its models and interfaces.