Humanoid (SKL Robotics) — industrial humanoid robots from London
Humanoid — trading name of SKL Robotics Ltd — is a London-headquartered robotics and AI company building general-purpose humanoid robots for industrial automation. Its HMND 01 Alpha platform, available in wheeled and bipedal configurations and powered by the in-house KinetIQ AI framework, has positioned the company as Europe's first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn during the current humanoid and general-purpose robot AI boom.
- 2024Founded
- London, UKHeadquarters
- HMND 01 AlphaLatest flagship
- $270M raisedFunding to date
- United KingdomCountry
- $1.35B UnicornStatus
About Humanoid (SKL Robotics)
SKL Robotics Ltd — trading as Humanoid — was founded in May 2024 in London by serial entrepreneur Artem Sokolov, who previously built a family manufacturing business into a billion-dollar enterprise before turning to humanoid robotics. From the outset, the company's brief was narrow and commercial: build a general-purpose humanoid robot that can be deployed on real production lines, warehouses, and retail back-of-house environments in Europe, with a supply chain and certification path that fit European industrial customers rather than a purely North American or Asian playbook.
The company moved unusually fast. Its first industrial platform, the HMND 01 Alpha Wheeled mobile manipulator, was developed in roughly seven months and unveiled in September 2025 — a cadence the company describes as the fastest humanoid development ever. A bipedal configuration of the same HMND 01 line followed in December 2025, targeting confined and human-centric spaces where a wheeled base cannot go. Both variants share the same upper-body mechatronics and are orchestrated by KinetIQ, Humanoid's proprietary four-layer AI framework, which combines a vision-language-action model for manipulation with fleet-level task orchestration across mixed-morphology robots.
Commercial validation arrived quickly as well. Humanoid completed joint proofs of concept with Siemens and Bosch in early 2026, and signed a multi-year strategic partnership with motion-technology group Schaeffler covering the deployment of hundreds — and eventually one to two thousand — HMND 01 robots across Schaeffler production facilities by 2032. Bosch, in parallel, became a contract-manufacturing partner for European production. In July 2026, the company closed a $152 million Series A led by Prime Movers Lab with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon FHVC, and Aglae Ventures at a $1.35 billion post-money valuation — establishing Humanoid as Europe's first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn and bringing total capital raised to roughly $270 million.
Headcount has grown to more than 250 engineers, researchers, and operators across offices in London, Boston, Vancouver, and San Diego. Humanoid competes with a growing cohort of well-funded humanoid programs including Figure AI, Tesla Optimus, 1X, Apptronik, Agility Robotics, Neura Robotics, and Boston Dynamics — but its industrial-first, wheeled-then-bipedal approach and European manufacturing base give it a distinct positioning within the broader humanoid robotics and AI boom.
Product lineup: HMND 01 Alpha Wheeled and Bipedal
Humanoid's product strategy is deliberately modular. Rather than betting the company on a single form factor, both HMND 01 Alpha variants share a common humanoid upper body — two arms, a head, and torso-mounted sensing and compute — and swap the lower body between an omnidirectional wheeled base for stability and speed, and a fully articulated bipedal base for confined, human-centric spaces. Both variants are driven end-to-end by KinetIQ.
HMND 01 Alpha Wheeled (2025) — the industrial mobile manipulator
Unveiled in September 2025, the wheeled HMND 01 Alpha is Humanoid's lead industrial platform. It stands approximately 220 cm tall, weighs around 300 kg, carries payloads up to 15 kg (more when kept close to the body), moves at up to 2 m/s (about 7.2 km/h), and operates for roughly four hours per charge. It has 29 active degrees of freedom excluding end-effectors, which can be configured as 12-DoF five-fingered hands or 1-DoF parallel grippers depending on whether the task calls for dexterity or heavy handling.
HMND 01 Alpha Bipedal (2025) — the R&D bipedal platform
Unveiled in December 2025, the bipedal HMND 01 Alpha shares the wheeled version's upper body and KinetIQ stack but replaces the omnidirectional base with a full bipedal locomotion system. It is positioned for confined spaces where human-like movement is required — narrow aisles, stairs, and human-centric work cells — and also serves as the company's platform for domestic use cases in later product generations.
KinetIQ AI framework — the shared brain
KinetIQ is Humanoid's proprietary four-layer AI stack: a foundation vision-language-action model for manipulation, a task-planning layer, a fleet-orchestration layer for coordinating mixed-morphology robots toward a shared goal, and a safety and telemetry layer. In July 2026, Humanoid announced KinetIQ Ascend, a reinforcement-learning upgrade that the company reports achieves 99.9% manipulation reliability at human speed on representative industrial tasks.
| Model | Year | Height | Weight | Payload | Battery | Actuators | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HMND 01 Alpha Wheeled | 2025 | ~220 cm | ~300 kg | 15 kg | ~4 hr | Electric, 29 active DoF | Omnidirectional base, 2 m/s, dual-arm manipulator |
| HMND 01 Alpha Bipedal | 2025 | ~175 cm (early spec) | ~70 kg (early spec) | — | — | Electric, 41 DoF (early spec) | Bipedal locomotion; confined-space R&D platform |
| KinetIQ / KinetIQ Ascend | 2025–2026 | — | — | — | — | — | Four-layer VLA + fleet-orchestration AI stack |
Technology stack
Humanoid's platform is a vertically integrated combination of custom mechatronics, multi-modal perception, high-performance onboard compute, and a proprietary vision-language-action model. The company has publicly framed the humanoid problem as one requiring tight co-design of hardware and AI — and it develops both in-house.
Perception
HMND 01 uses a multi-camera vision system with RGB and depth sensing for 360-degree situational awareness, supplemented by force-torque sensors and haptic feedback at the manipulators. This mix of vision and touch is what allows the robot to perform contact-rich picking, kitting, machine-tending, and packaging tasks in unstructured industrial environments.
KinetIQ VLA model
KinetIQ is Humanoid's in-house vision-language-action stack. It maps natural-language instructions and camera input directly to actuator commands, plans tasks over longer horizons, and — via its fleet layer — hands work off between multiple robots of different morphologies. Because the VLA model runs on the robot itself, KinetIQ does not require cloud connectivity for real-time tasks, an important requirement for factory-floor deployment.
Actuators, power, and compute
HMND 01 uses electric brushless-DC (BLDC) actuators throughout the body — no hydraulics — which simplifies serviceability and improves efficiency. Each robot carries a custom battery pack targeting roughly four hours of continuous operation, and the onboard compute stack is understood to include NVIDIA-class GPU acceleration for the KinetIQ model, with SAP, Nvidia, Bosch, Siemens, and Schaeffler listed among Humanoid's industrial partners.
Power management is a particularly demanding subsystem for a 300 kg wheeled 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 precision passives and MLCC capacitors on every gate-drive and current-sense channel. The onboard battery pack integrates cell balancing, thermal management, and multi-stage protection ICs — subsystems whose reliability is often the practical ceiling on how long a humanoid platform can run between charges.
Applications and commercial deployments
Humanoid's stated market is industrial automation — factory production lines, logistics hubs, and retail back-of-house — with a specific focus on repetitive, physically demanding tasks such as picking, sorting, kitting, machine-tending, and packaging. Announced and reported deployments include:
- Schaeffler — multi-year deployment agreement. Under a strategic partnership announced in January 2026 and expanded in 2026, Schaeffler committed to bringing hundreds of HMND 01 robots into its production facilities, with public reporting citing a target of 1,000–2,000 wheeled units across sites by 2032.
- Bosch — POC and contract manufacturing. Humanoid and Bosch completed a joint proof of concept in March 2026 and agreed to manufacture and deploy HMND 01 robots for the European market, with Bosch acting as a contract-manufacturing partner.
- Siemens — industrial POC. A two-phase proof of concept with Siemens demonstrated HMND 01 on representative industrial tasks and is a reference point for further factory pilots.
- Beta rollouts (Q4 2026). Long-term commercial deployments across logistics, manufacturing, and retail are scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026, alongside the start of mass manufacturing of wheeled units.
- Pre-orders and pipeline. Public reporting cites more than 34,000 pre-orders worth roughly $2.4 billion accumulated before shipping the first commercial unit.
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 HMND-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 Humanoid (SKL Robotics)?
Humanoid, legally incorporated as SKL Robotics Ltd, was founded in May 2024 by Artem Sokolov, a serial entrepreneur and the company's CEO. It is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with additional offices in Boston, Vancouver, and San Diego.
What is HMND 01 Alpha?
HMND 01 Alpha is Humanoid's flagship general-purpose humanoid platform. It ships in two configurations: a wheeled dual-arm mobile manipulator (unveiled September 2025) built on an omnidirectional base for industrial use, and a bipedal version (unveiled December 2025) for confined and human-centric spaces. Both are powered by the company's in-house KinetIQ AI framework.
Where are Humanoid robots deployed?
Humanoid completed joint proofs of concept with Siemens and Bosch in early 2026, signed a multi-year deployment agreement with Schaeffler covering hundreds of robots across production facilities, and has commercial beta rollouts with logistics, manufacturing, and retail customers scheduled to begin in Q4 2026. Bosch is also a contract-manufacturing partner for European production.
How much has Humanoid (SKL Robotics) raised?
Humanoid closed a $152 million Series A in July 2026 led by Prime Movers Lab with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon FHVC, and Aglae Ventures. The round valued the company at $1.35 billion post-money, making it Europe's first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn and bringing total capital raised to roughly $270 million.
Is Hybrid Electronics affiliated with Humanoid or SKL Robotics?
No. Hybrid Electronics is an independent electronic-components sourcing company. We are not a distributor, reseller, or partner of Humanoid or SKL Robotics Ltd. 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. Humanoid®, HMND 01, HMND 01 Alpha, and KinetIQ are trademarks of SKL Robotics Ltd. Hybrid Electronics is an independent electronic-components sourcing company and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by SKL Robotics Ltd. All information on this page is compiled from public sources for educational and reference purposes.