Mistral boss and Yann LeCun back Swiss robotics startup Enact in $30M pre-seed round

Swiss robotics startup Enact Intelligence has emerged from stealth mode with a $30 million pre-seed funding round. The investment was led by Mistral boss Arthur Mensch and Meta's former AI chief scientist Yann LeCun. This is a significant amount of funding for a pre-seed round, indicating strong interest in the robotics sector. Enact aims to build the foundational technology for general-purpose robots that can manipulate objects with greater accuracy.

The startup's approach differs from others in the industry, as it relies on robots sensing force and touch through their own actuators, providing real-time feedback and enabling data-efficient learning. CEO and co-founder Manuel Yves Gallier explained that their robots can feel their environment in real-time and learn more efficiently, leading to improved reliability and performance.

The validation of their technology for real-world deployment is achieved through a technology stack that covers model architectures, data pipelines, and actuators and sensors. The $30 million round, which includes participation from venture capital firms Redalpine, Notion Capital, and Firstminute Capital, as well as angel investors like Mensch, LeCun, and Hugging Face’s Thomas Wolf, will be used to expand Enact's team and accelerate its hardware and research and development.