Apptronik — Austin-built humanoid robots for logistics and manufacturing
Apptronik is an Austin, Texas robotics company spun out of the University of Texas Human Centered Robotics Lab, building general-purpose humanoid robots for logistics, manufacturing, and warehousing. With Apollo — its flagship 5'8", 160-lb humanoid unveiled in 2023 — Apptronik is a leading player in the current humanoid robotics and AI boom, alongside Figure AI, Tesla Optimus, 1X, Agility Robotics, and Boston Dynamics.
- 2016Founded
- Austin, TXHeadquarters
- ApolloFlagship humanoid (2023)
- $1B+Funding raised
- USACountry
- PrivateStatus
About Apptronik
Apptronik was founded in 2016 in Austin, Texas as a spinout of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. Co-founders Jeff Cardenas (CEO) and Nick Paine (CTO) built the company on more than a decade of academic and applied research into force-controlled, human-safe humanoid machines. Long before the current general-purpose robot AI boom, Apptronik was working on the underlying mechatronics — proprietary linear actuators, force-controlled joints, and compliant control architectures — that make it possible for a humanoid robot to share a workspace with people.
The company's early years were dominated by research platforms and government-funded collaborations. Apptronik partnered with NASA's Johnson Space Center on the terrestrial evolution of the Valkyrie humanoid research program, and it built a portfolio of upper-body and full-body research systems — including Astra (a bimanual manipulation upper body) and Draco (a bipedal lower-body platform) — that gave it hands-on experience with virtually every subsystem of a humanoid robot before ever committing to a single commercial flagship.
In August 2023 Apptronik unveiled Apollo, its first commercial general-purpose humanoid robot. Funding accelerated sharply from that point. After a $28 million Series A in 2022, Apptronik closed a $350 million Series A extension in February 2025 — co-led by B Capital and Capital Factory, with participation from Google — followed shortly by an additional $53 million round from Mercedes-Benz and ARK Invest that pushed total Series A funding beyond $400 million. In February 2026 Apptronik added a further $520 million extension that reportedly tripled the company's valuation to more than $5.5 billion, cementing its position as one of the most heavily capitalized humanoid robotics startups in the world.
In December 2024 Apptronik announced a landmark partnership with Google DeepMind to combine Apollo's hardware with DeepMind's AI foundation models for robotics — mirroring the broader industry thesis that proprietary hardware plus a purpose-built foundation model is the durable moat in general-purpose robotics. Together with a growing pilot roster that includes Mercedes-Benz and GXO Logistics, Apptronik has positioned itself as a direct competitor to Figure AI, Tesla Optimus, 1X NEO, Agility Digit, and Boston Dynamics Atlas in the race to bring a general-purpose humanoid to real work at scale.
Product lineup: Astra, Draco, and Apollo
Apptronik's product lineup reflects the company's academic roots: nearly a decade of upper-body, lower-body, and research-grade humanoid platforms preceded the launch of its commercial flagship. Each earlier system validated a specific piece of the humanoid stack — bimanual manipulation, bipedal locomotion, force-controlled linear actuation — before those pieces were integrated into Apollo, the company's first platform explicitly designed for real commercial deployment.
Astra (research upper body)
Astra was Apptronik's bimanual research upper body, developed to explore force-controlled dexterous manipulation with two coordinated arms and a torso. It served as a proving ground for the linear actuators, torque-sensing joints, and compliant control that would later appear in Apollo, and it was widely used in university and enterprise research programs.
Draco (bipedal lower body)
Draco was Apptronik's bipedal lower-body research platform, focused on the hardest piece of the humanoid problem: stable, force-controlled walking on real floors. Together with Astra, Draco gave the team a mature bipedal locomotion stack — gait planning, balance, and joint-level torque control — that Apollo inherits.
Apollo (2023) — the commercial flagship
Apollo is Apptronik's first general-purpose humanoid robot built for real commercial work. It stands 5'8" (1.73 m), weighs 160 lb (72.6 kg), and carries a 55 lb (25 kg) payload — meaningful figures for logistics, kitting, and light manufacturing tasks. A defining architectural choice is Apollo's hot-swappable battery pack: each pack delivers roughly four hours of runtime and can be exchanged in under five minutes, enabling near-continuous multi-shift operation. Apollo runs on entirely electric actuation — no hydraulics — and uses Apptronik's proprietary linear-drive actuator technology, which allows for high force output with the mechanical compliance required to work safely around people.
| Model | Year | Height | Weight | Payload | Battery/Runtime | Actuators | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astra | Pre-2023 | Upper-body | — | Bimanual | Tethered | Force-controlled | Research upper body; manipulation R&D |
| Draco | Pre-2023 | Lower-body | — | — | Tethered | Linear-drive | Bipedal locomotion research platform |
| Apollo | 2023 | ~1.73 m (5'8") | ~72.6 kg (160 lb) | ~25 kg (55 lb) | ~4 hr, hot-swappable | Proprietary linear electric | Flagship general-purpose humanoid; Mercedes-Benz, GXO pilots |
Technology stack
Apptronik's differentiator is a decade of hard-won mechatronics: proprietary force-controlled linear actuators, an all-electric drive architecture (no hydraulics), and a compliant joint design that makes Apollo behave more like a collaborative robot than a traditional industrial arm. Layered on top is an AI stack that, following the December 2024 Google DeepMind partnership, is being co-developed with one of the strongest foundation-model labs in the world.
Perception
Apollo carries a multi-camera vision system — RGB and depth — for situational awareness, complemented by joint-level torque sensing and inertial measurement units (IMUs) for balance and orientation. The combination of vision, torque feedback, and force-controlled actuation is what lets Apollo perform contact-rich tasks such as placing totes, inserting parts, and reacting to unexpected contact without triggering a hard emergency stop.
AI and control
The Google DeepMind collaboration, announced in December 2024, pairs Apollo's hardware with DeepMind's robotics AI stack — the same lineage as the RT-series and Gemini Robotics foundation models. In parallel, Apollo is documented running on NVIDIA Jetson-class onboard compute (AGX Orin plus Jetson Orin NX) that delivers hundreds of TOPS of edge AI throughput, keeping perception, planning, and low-level control on the robot rather than in the cloud.
Actuators, power, and compute
Apollo uses Apptronik's proprietary linear electric actuators throughout the body — a design lineage that traces back to the company's earliest UT-Austin research and has been continuously refined across Astra, Draco, and now Apollo. Power is delivered by a hot-swappable lithium-ion battery pack that gives roughly four hours of runtime per pack and enables near-continuous operation across a shift. Onboard compute is dominated by NVIDIA Jetson-class modules for perception and AI inference, plus dedicated real-time controllers for the joints.
Power management is a defining subsystem for a humanoid of this class. Each joint's servo controller must deliver hundreds of watts of instantaneous torque without thermally throttling, which drives the use of high-efficiency wide-bandgap semiconductors (SiC and GaN) in the motor-driver stages and requires tightly matched MLCC and precision passives on every gate-drive and current-sense channel. The hot-swappable battery pack itself integrates cell balancing, thermal management, and multi-stage battery-management ICs — subsystems whose reliability, more than raw cell chemistry, sets the practical ceiling on how long Apollo can run between pack swaps.
Applications and commercial deployments
Apptronik has positioned Apollo squarely at logistics, warehousing, and light manufacturing — high-turnover, physically demanding jobs where a 160-lb humanoid with a 55-lb payload and multi-hour hot-swap runtime is economically credible. Announced pilots and partners include:
- Mercedes-Benz. Apptronik began deploying Apollo units on Mercedes-Benz assembly-line tasks in 2024, evaluating the platform for parts delivery, kitting, and other repeatable manual work. Mercedes-Benz also participated as a direct investor.
- GXO Logistics. Apptronik has publicly partnered with GXO, one of the largest contract-logistics companies in the world, to pilot Apollo on case-handling, pick-and-place, and general material-movement tasks in distribution centers.
- NASA Johnson Space Center. Apptronik's long-running collaboration with NASA JSC — including work descended from the Valkyrie humanoid research program — informed Apollo's terrestrial architecture and its emphasis on human-safe, force-controlled operation.
- Broader industrial pilots. Apptronik has stated interest in additional customers across automotive, electronics manufacturing, third-party logistics, beverage bottling, and consumer packaged goods — sectors where near-continuous multi-shift operation is the economic threshold Apollo is engineered to clear.
The robotics supply chain — where Hybrid Electronics fits in
A modern humanoid robot is one of the most component-dense products ever built. A single Apollo-class platform depends on thousands of individual electronic components: precision BLDC motor drivers, high-torque servo modules, IMUs and 6-DoF force-torque sensors, LiDAR and time-of-flight modules, GPU compute boards, battery-management ICs, wide-bandgap SiC/GaN power semiconductors, high-speed board-to-board connectors, precision resistors, and thousands of MLCC capacitors distributed across every power and signal rail.
Building that kind of hardware puts enormous pressure on the electronic-components supply chain. Prototype pilots and low-volume production runs frequently hit allocation, EOL notices, and long lead times on the exact parts they need, and R&D and field-service teams routinely have to support older platforms that use semiconductors no longer in mainstream distribution. During the current humanoid robotics and general-purpose robot AI boom, this pressure is amplified: dozens of well-funded teams are chasing the same short list of high-torque BLDC drivers, precision IMUs, GPU compute modules, and automotive-grade power semiconductors, and franchise stock on many key parts is now measured in months of lead time rather than weeks.
Hybrid Electronics has been sourcing electronic components for industrial and embedded systems since 1995. For robotics teams — humanoid, mobile, industrial, and research — we specialize in finding the parts you need when mainstream distribution can't:
Obsolete and end-of-life parts
Legacy semiconductors, sensors, connectors, and passives that are no longer in mainstream distribution — the parts that keep older platforms running during transitions to newer hardware, and the long-tail items that block a BOM from closing.
Allocated and hard-to-find active parts
High-torque BLDC motor drivers, IMUs and MEMS sensors, SiC/GaN power devices, GPU compute modules, precision resistors, and MLCC capacitors caught in allocation or long-lead times. Send us a BOM or a shortage list — we'll confirm what we can source and at what lead time.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded Apptronik?
Apptronik was founded in 2016 in Austin, Texas by Jeff Cardenas (CEO) and Nick Paine (CTO) as a spinout of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. The company remains headquartered in Austin.
What is Apollo?
Apollo is Apptronik's flagship general-purpose humanoid robot, unveiled in August 2023. It stands 5'8" (1.73 m), weighs 160 lb (72.6 kg), lifts a 55 lb (25 kg) payload, and runs on hot-swappable lithium-ion battery packs that deliver roughly four hours of runtime each — enabling near-continuous multi-shift operation.
Where are Apptronik robots deployed commercially?
Apptronik has publicly announced Apollo pilots with Mercedes-Benz on automotive assembly-line tasks and with GXO Logistics on warehouse case-handling and material movement. The company also has a long-running collaboration with NASA Johnson Space Center that informed Apollo's terrestrial architecture.
How much has Apptronik raised?
Following a $28 million Series A in 2022, Apptronik closed a $350 million Series A extension in February 2025 — co-led by B Capital and Capital Factory, with Google participating — plus an additional $53 million from Mercedes-Benz and ARK Invest. In February 2026 the company added a further $520 million extension that reportedly tripled its valuation to more than $5.5 billion, bringing total funding well above $1 billion.
Is Hybrid Electronics affiliated with Apptronik?
No. Hybrid Electronics is an independent electronic-components sourcing company. We are not a distributor, reseller, or partner of Apptronik. All trademarks are property of their respective owners. Hybrid supports robotics developers by sourcing obsolete, allocated, and hard-to-find semiconductors, sensors, connectors, and passives for R&D, prototype, and low-volume production builds.
Can Hybrid help with components for humanoid robotics builds?
Yes. We regularly support R&D and integrator teams with hard-to-find semiconductors, BLDC motor-driver ICs, IMUs and other MEMS sensors, connectors, SiC/GaN power devices, and precision passives for the industrial and embedded boards used in robotics platforms. Send us a BOM or a short list of shortages and we'll confirm availability and pricing.
Trademark and affiliation notice. Apptronik® and Apollo are trademarks of Apptronik, Inc. Hybrid Electronics is an independent electronic-components sourcing company and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by Apptronik, Inc. All information on this page is compiled from public sources for educational and reference purposes.