{
  "id": 15747010,
  "title": "Eka is worth $1.45B thanks to a physical AI model that has experts raving",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/20/eka-is-worth-1-45b-thanks-to-a-physical-ai-model-that-has-experts",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-20T13:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "TechCrunch",
    "slug": "techcrunch",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/20/eka-is-worth-1-45-billion-thanks-to-a-physical-ai-model-that-has-experts-raving/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Eka Robotics, founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja, has just achieved a valuation of $1.45 billion following an $150 million Series A funding round led by venture firms a16z and F-Prime. The company's innovative approach to robotic manipulation, which focuses on the relationship between language, force inputs, and actions, has garnered attention from experts in the field. Unlike traditional vision-language-action models, Eka's vision-force-action model emphasizes the importance of force and touch in achieving superior dexterity. The startup's unique robotic hand, equipped with advanced force sensors, allows it to adapt to a wide range of objects without retraining and reliably pick up 1,500 objects weighing up to 1 kg in an hour. This significant leap in performance has left seasoned roboticists astonished, comparing the robot's abilities to the breakthroughs achieved in legged locomotion five to ten years ago. Eka's secret lies in their physics-based simulation approach, which generates thousands of hours of robot experience in minutes, enabling the robot to surpass any demonstrations provided during training. By bridging the gap between generalization and performance, Eka Robotics is poised to revolutionize the field of physical AI models, offering a more generalizable solution that can handle multiple tasks with remarkable efficiency and reliability.",
  "summary": "Eka Robotics may be the first robotic arm that is actually good at picking a wide range of objects up, and it is so smooth and human-like, it is wowing the industry.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}