Syncere Raises $11M in Pre-Seed Funding to Develop Home Robot Disguised as a Lamp
By Greg Bock · · 3 min read
Insider Brief
- Syncere has raised $11 million in pre-seed funding led by a16z Speedrun to expand production and deliveries of Lume, a home robot that doubles as a floor lamp and is designed to learn new household tasks.
- Starting at $2,699, Lume can move around the home and perform chores such as folding laundry, tidying rooms and making beds, with plans for software updates that expand its capabilities.
- The startup has generated millions of dollars in pre-order demand and begun delivering Lume to customers, using real-world household data to improve its AI models and support future commercial applications.
Syncere has raised $11 million in pre-seed funding to expand production of Lume, a household robot that doubles as a floor lamp and is designed to learn new chores through software updates.
According to the Palo Alto, California-based startup, the round was led by a16z Speedrun, with participation from Draper Associates, Physical World, Sequel, SeaX Ventures and other investors. The funding will support ongoing deliveries, increased manufacturing capacity and development of the company’s physical AI technology for commercial applications.
Lume combines a movable robotic system with a floor lamp. Syncere says the robot can move around a home and perform household tasks such as folding laundry, tidying rooms and making beds.
Syncere co-founder and CEO Aaron Tan said home robots need real-world data to become reliable, but getting them into households requires a level of reliability they have yet to achieve.
“We built Lume to break that cycle,” Tan said. “By creating a robot that people already want in their homes as a beautiful, functional lamp, we can deploy earlier, learn from real households, and improve autonomy over time. Every Lume we ship makes our technology smarter, and every software update makes the same robot more useful.”
How Lume Works
The company is developing a system that will allow customers to teach Lume how they prefer chores to be done. Through an onboarding process, users will be able to demonstrate tasks and establish preferences that the robot can learn and apply to their homes. Syncere plans to improve Lume’s capabilities through software updates, allowing existing units to perform additional tasks without hardware upgrades.
According to the company, Lume has generated millions of dollars in pre-order demand and has already entered production, with units being delivered to customers. The product was also named one of Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2026.
Founded less than a year ago by roboticists Tan and Angus Fung, Syncere combines robotic manipulation, computer vision and onboard AI computing in its first consumer product. The company’s team includes researchers with backgrounds at Stanford, Harvard, the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley. Its engineering and design staff also bring experience from Nuro, AMD, General Motors and Apple.
Syncere plans to use its experience developing and deploying Lume, which starts at $2,699, to extend its robotics technology into additional commercial applications.
