Theker Secures $85 Million to Develop a Versatile Factory Robot Platform

Humanoid robots may not yet be ready to replace factory workers, but manufacturers facing labour shortages are increasingly looking for automation solutions that can be deployed today. That growing demand is helping fuel interest in startups that promise greater flexibility than traditional industrial robots.

One of those companies is Theker, an AI robotics startup focused on building machines that are not limited to a single task. “If you always have to put the same cookie in the same box, that works perfectly, but most processes aren’t like that,” said co-founder Carla Gómez Cano.

Theker’s approach is designed for more complex environments. Rather than building humanoid robots around a fixed structure as companies such as Boston Dynamics do, Theker creates robots that can be reconfigured to meet operational needs. Their arms, hands, and physical form can be swapped, adjusted, or resized to perform different tasks, including sorting packages, packing clothing, or handling bottles and cans in warehouses.

The company’s early backing from Inditex, the parent company of Zara, highlights where its technology may be deployed first. However, Theker’s long-term ambition extends beyond retail logistics into larger industrial and manufacturing environments, where a significant amount of work still relies on manual labour.

That vision has helped establish Theker as one of Europe’s emerging robotics startups. The Barcelona-based company has now secured $85 million in new funding, which it describes as the largest robotics Series A round ever raised in Europe.

The financing comes less than a year after the company completed a record-setting seed round. The Series A was led by U.S. venture capital firm CRV and included participation from strategic and financial investors, including Samsung and Aglaé Ventures, the investment firm associated with LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault.

Gómez Cano said Samsung is not currently a customer but confirmed that discussions between the two companies are progressing. She noted that having Samsung as an investor, supplier, and customer would provide both revenue opportunities and valuable credibility in large-scale manufacturing.

She also emphasised that she and co-founder Jiaqiang Ye Zhu built Theker with commercial deployment in mind rather than extended pilot programmes. Instead of focusing on innovation teams, the company works directly with logistics and operations departments, where purchasing decisions are made more quickly.

To demonstrate its capabilities, Theker operates a showroom in central Barcelona and plans to open additional locations as it expands throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia. The company also intends to increase hiring across engineering, deployment, and sales functions.

“We already received 15,000 job applications and have to filter like crazy,” Gómez Cano said. She estimated that the workforce could grow from several dozen employees to around 120 by the end of the year, before joking that she had also originally expected to raise only $30 million to $40 million.

The fact that Theker raised more than double its initial target has strengthened the company’s commitment to keeping its headquarters in Barce. This city is increasingly becoming a hub for robotics innovation.

“It has never been a barrier to acceleration for us, so we are making the most of it,” Gómez Cano said.