Intro
RoboForce was founded in 2023 as a private robotics engineering company base in Milpitas, California, dedicated to the development of the "world's most advanced Robo-Labor system". The company’s core objective is to automate dangerous and tedious tasks across industrial sectors, thereby generating improvements in operational safety and efficiency. This mission is rooted in the founders' deep understanding of industrial friction points, aiming to shift human labor away from monotonous or hazardous roles.
The company was co-founded by Leo Ma (CEO) and Calvin Zhou (Co-Founder and VP of Engineering). CEO Leo Ma brings significant entrepreneurial validation, having previously served as a co-founder who guided a startup through to a Nasdaq IPO (Cyngn). His vision for RoboForce is driven by over a decade of firsthand analysis of production automation in more than 200 factories. This highly empirical approach ensures the product strategy is directly informed by verified market demand for automating high-risk operational challenges.
Co-founder Calvin Zhou provides crucial technical leadership, heading all engineering efforts for the Robo-Labor system. Zhou’s background includes working at Cruise, General Motors' autonomous vehicle division. This expertise from the highly demanding field of autonomous vehicles is directly applicable to RoboForce's mandate, ensuring the systems are architecturally capable of robust, real-world autonomy in unpredictable, unstructured environments. The broader technical team reflects this elite focus, drawing talent from top-tier institutions and rival technology companies such as Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics, Tesla Robotics, Google, Waymo, and Amazon Robotics
Robots
- TITAN:
The company's first AI robot built specifically for real-world deployment. It serves as the tangible execution of the "Robo-Labor system" designed to automate hazardous and monotonous industrial tasks.
Specialism
- Robo-Labor System Integration:
The specialized focus is integrating sophisticated AI with ruggedized hardware to create a complete "Robo-Labor System" capable of replacing human labor in complex, unstructured tasks. - Outdoor/Demanding Environment Autonomy:
A key unique specialism is the robot's capacity for deployment in demanding outdoor industrial environments. This requires a high degree of technical sophistication in areas like sensor fusion, dynamic path planning, and physical resilience (e.g., weather and terrain adaptation - High-Risk Task Automation:
The products are specifically engineered to automate tasks characterized by high risk and tedium, directly improving human worker safety and operational liability.
Business Viability
The company has successfully raised a total of $15 million in capital. This funding includes a significant $10 million Series A round secured on January 6, 2025, followed by an additional $5 million announced in May, which coincided with the introduction of the TITAN robot. The speed of the follow-on funding is indicative of strong investor confidence in the company's achievement of key technical milestones.
The company is backed by a highly distinguished group of investors, which validates both the economic and technical strategy:
- Nobel Laureate Myron Scholes:
His backing signals confidence in the macroeconomic model that industrial automation, especially of high-risk tasks, is financially crucial for future industrial health. - Gary Rieschel:
A co-founder of Softbank VC, his involvement validates the potential for massive commercial scale and global market disruption. - Carnegie Mellon University (CMU):
The university's investment provides a powerful endorsement of the core technology and the technical competence of the CMU alumni co-founders.
The confluence of proven leadership, specialized technical talent (from top AV and robotics firms) , and institutional backing places RoboForce in a strong competitive position to capture high-value revenue streams from underserved industrial markets that require resilient, high-autonomy solutions. The strategic focus on dangerous outdoor environments provides a technical moat, positioning the company as a specialized leader rather than a general-purpose automation contender.
