Zürich-based Exclaim Robotics exits stealth with €4.29 million to build robots for AI data centre maintenance

Zürich-based Exclaim Robotics has stepped out of stealth mode with a €4.29 million ($4.95 million) pre-Seed investment led by Founderful and Playfair. The company is developing autonomous mobile robots for routine maintenance and repair tasks inside AI data centres. Helen Oleynikova, CEO and Founder, explains that data centre infrastructure is evolving at an unprecedented pace, with liquid cooling, high voltage DC power, and potential superconducting bus bars.

Maintaining this complex setup by hand becomes increasingly dangerous, making robots an ideal solution. Oleynikova, who previously worked at Willow Garage, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and ETH Zürich, brings extensive expertise in robotics and mapping. Her founding team also includes Patrick Pfreundschuh, an ETH Zürich PhD graduate who developed the BIEVR-LIO LiDAR-inertial odometry system and contributed to the DARPA Subterranean Challenge-winning team.

As AI data centres scale rapidly while facing a shortage of skilled technicians, maintaining the high-voltage components within these facilities presents significant risks. Exclaim Robotics aims to tackle these challenges by creating robots that can independently navigate data halls, position themselves at racks, and perform maintenance tasks such as replacing optics, cleaning SFPs, and replacing drives.

The robots first train in simulation, refining their skills before testing them in real-world scenarios with real sensors. Once confident in their abilities, the robots can safely work on tasks that would otherwise require human intervention. Exclaim Robotics plans to use the funding to develop prototypes, acquire necessary hardware, and expand their engineering team.

The company envisions expanding its capabilities to address hazardous, remote, and hard-to-reach infrastructure maintenance in various environments, with high-voltage and energy infrastructure as the next frontier.