[Eka Robotics Secures $150 Million in Series A Funding, Post-Money Valuation Reaches $1.45 Billion] According to a report by TechCrunch on October 21, robotics startup Eka Robotics has completed a $150 million Series A funding round, achieving a post-money valuation of $1.45 billion. The round was co-led by a16z and F-Prime. The company was founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja. Its force-controlled gripper and "vision-force-action" model are regarded as a new approach to physical AI. Eka claims that its robot can pick up approximately 1,500 objects weighing no more than 1 kilogram per hour, compared to about 600 for humans, with a success rate exceeding 95%. Its training does not rely on human demonstration videos but instead uses physics simulations to generate reinforcement learning environments, creating thousands of hours of robotic experience within minutes. The gripper hardware costs less than $1,000, is rated for 5 million work cycles, and aims to meet the industrial robotic arm standard of 20 million cycles. Raghu Raghuram, General Partner at a16z, stated that the robot has already surpassed human performance in certain tasks. Several robotics experts described the demonstrations as "astonishing." However, the company has yet to validate its technology on real production lines and is currently conducting confidential pilot projects with select industrial clients, focusing on two scenarios: pick-and-place and cable manipulation.