Insider Brief
- Enigma emerged from stealth with $71 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital to develop AI models and software that simplify robot training, deployment and use.
- Founded less than a year ago by Jonathan Jacobi and Gal Niv, the company is building robot-agnostic foundation models and interfaces designed to work across different hardware, tasks and physical environments.
- Enigma is also launching Robots Online, which will let users control 100 AI-powered robots over the internet in real time, as it expands its team, computing capacity and deployments in entertainment, retail and health.
Enigma has emerged from stealth with $71 million in seed funding to develop AI models and software designed to make robots easier to train, deploy and use.
Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital led the round, with participation from Conviction Partners and executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, Cognition and Wiz, according to the San Francisco-based company. The company said the funding will be used to expand Enigma’s research and engineering teams, increase computing capacity and support more real-world deployments and public robotics experiences.
“Once in a generation, a technology shift reshapes not just software, but the structure of entire industries,” co-founder and CEO Jonathan Jacobi said in the announcement. “We believe AI’s next chapter is moving beyond chatbots and screens into systems that can understand, adapt to, and operate in the physical world. We’re building the intelligence layer for robotics through breakthrough AI models and novel human-robot interfaces. Our goal is to make intelligent robots as natural to work with as computers and smartphones are today.”
Founded less than a year ago by Jacobi and Gal Niv, Enigma said it is building foundation models that can operate across different robots, hardware platforms and physical settings. Its software combines those models with robot-agnostic tools and new user interfaces intended to reduce the engineering and manual data collection typically required for deployment.
The company announced it is also launching Robots Online, an interactive platform that will allow people to control 100 AI-powered robots over the internet in real time. Users will be able to direct the robots to complete tasks and handle physical objects, generating data on how people naturally interact with robotic systems.
Enigma said the project will help it improve both its AI models and user interfaces as it works to make robots accessible to engineers, businesses and consumers. The company indicated it is already working with partners in entertainment, retail and health.
Jacobi and Niv met while serving in Israel’s Unit 8200 and previously worked across cybersecurity, scientific research and large-scale computing systems. Enigma said it has since assembled a team of researchers and engineers with backgrounds in AI, mathematics, physics, cybersecurity and robotics.
Image credit: Enigma
