Physical AI Startup Mowito Raises $3 Million in Pre-Seed Funding

Physical AI startup Mowito has raised $3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Version One Ventures, with participation from All In Capital, Unisol, and iSeed, according to an Economic Times report. According to ChainCatcher, the round also included angel investments from AI researcher Soumith Chintala and founders associated with Foundry Robotics, Coformer.ai, and Better Capital. Founded in 2024 by Puru Rastogi, Adityanag Nagesh, and Safar V, Mowito is developing an AI foundation model for industrial robotic arms that enables robots to learn tasks by observing human demonstrations rather than relying on explicit programming. The company says this approach aims to reduce software programming bottlenecks in manufacturing automation, particularly when product lines change and control code would otherwise need to be rewritten. Mowito said its software can run on standard, unmodified industrial robots and is serving customers in automotive and electronics manufacturing. The company plans to use the new funding to expand in the U.S. market, grow its engineering and marketing teams, and deepen deployments at manufacturing sites.