Insider Brief
- Extend Robotics raised £2.6 million in pre-Series A funding to expand its Result-as-a-Service model, which lets manufacturers pay for completed robotic work rather than purchase robots outright.
- Skyworks Venture Capital Fund led the round, with Neo Venture Europe and Zip Capital participating, and the funding will support expansion across the U.K. and Europe plus development of a distributed remote-operator network.
- Extend’s AMAS platform combines immersive teleoperation with AI assistance for robot arms and humanoids, with deployments already spanning agriculture and manufacturing and 35 subscription customers across four sales regions.
Extend Robotics raised £2.6 million in pre-Series A funding to develop a service that lets manufacturers pay for completed robotic work rather than purchase robots outright.
Skyworks Venture Capital Fund led the round, with participation from Neo Venture Europe and Zip Capital, according to the U.K. startup. The funding will be used to expand its “Result-as-a-Service” offering across the U.K. and Europe and build out a network of remote robot operators.
Extend Robotics develops AMAS, an immersive teleoperation platform that allows people without robotics experience to remotely control robot arms or humanoids through a 3D interface. AI handles routine portions of a task while a human operator remains in control of work that requires more judgment or flexibility.
The company, founded in 2021, is marketing that approach for manufacturing jobs that are difficult to automate with conventional systems such as small-batch production, high-mix work and maintenance, as well as hazardous jobs in nuclear, aerospace and high-voltage environments.
Extend reported that it now has 35 subscription customers across four sales regions in automotive, aerospace, nuclear, robotics and agriculture. The company said revenue has doubled year over year for three consecutive years.
Result-As-A-Service
Under its Result-as-a-Service model, customers pay based on completed output instead of buying equipment. Extend said it takes responsibility for factors such as cycle time and task success, allowing manufacturers to add robotic capacity as an operating expense and scale it with demand.
“Every manufacturer we talk to has jobs they cannot fill and a finance director who will not sign off on a robot that might not work,” said founder and CEO Chang Liu, a former Imperial College London postdoctoral researcher in aerial robotics. “So stop selling them robots. Sell them the work getting done, price it against the output, and carry the risk ourselves.”
Extend indicted it continuously collects operational data from deployments to improve automation while customers continue paying for completed work.
The company reported that the model is already being used on a production line at Adrian Scripps, one of the U.K.’s largest apple growers. An Extend Robotics humanoid performs quality-control work on a live packing line, with the deployment streamed during the Google DeepMind Robotics Accelerator Demo Day in September. Extend was one of 12 companies selected for the three-month program.
At Leyland Trucks, Extend trained a robot to install high-voltage Master Service Disconnect units, a task previously involving live electrical work. A second deployment handles spray painting of custom components, Extend said.
Remote Manufacturing
Extend said it is also building a distributed operator network intended to let people control industrial robots without being physically present at a factory. Under the model, an operator elsewhere in the U.K. or Europe could remotely perform manufacturing work and pointed to jobs inside paint booths, gloveboxes or high-voltage work areas as examples.
The company describes its platform as hardware-neutral and was named an official integrator for Unitree Robotics in January. Nvidia also selected it as one of five companies for its Robotics Startup Showcase at GTC 2026.
