Oxford spinout Stateful robotics raises $4.8m to tackle real-world AI for robots
Oxford spinout Stateful Robotics has raised $4.8 million in pre-seed funding as it looks to solve one of the most persistent challenges in robotics: enabling machines to operate reliably over extended periods in unpredictable real-world environments.
The round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Oxford Science Enterprises, with additional backing from serial entrepreneur Stan Boland, founder of autonomous vehicle company Five.
The funding will be used to accelerate deployment of Stateful’s platform, which introduces a new layer of “long-horizon intelligence” — allowing robots to remember past events, adapt to changing conditions and plan tasks over hours or days rather than moments.
While recent advances in large language models and foundation AI systems have significantly improved robots’ ability to perceive and interpret their surroundings, most systems still struggle when environments change.
Unexpected obstacles, shifting lighting conditions or operational disruptions can quickly derail robotic systems that lack the ability to learn from past experiences.
Stateful Robotics aims to address this limitation by building what it describes as a persistent, evolving model of each deployment environment. By continuously integrating data on tasks, performance and historical outcomes, the platform allows robots to anticipate challenges and adapt in real time.
Professor Nick Hawes, co-founder and chief scientist, said traditional systems treat each decision in isolation.
“Stateless systems cannot remember previous incidents or how work actually flows through a site,” he said. “Our platform builds a shared model of tasks and environments that enables robots to adapt to disruption and complete missions safely without constant supervision.”
The company was co-founded by chief executive Kirsty Lloyd-Jukes, previously CEO of Latent Logic, an Oxford spinout acquired by Waymo, alongside leading academic researchers including Professor Nick Hawes, Professor David Parker and Dr Bruno Lacerda.
Their work builds on more than a decade of research at the University of Oxford in areas such as autonomy, decision-making under uncertainty and probabilistic verification.
Lloyd-Jukes said the key challenge facing robotics is not immediate decision-making, but longer-term planning.
“Most robots are good at ‘what now’, but fail at ‘what next’, especially when ‘next’ spans hours or days,” she said. “By maintaining a live model of each deployment, we ensure robots perform reliably and consistently across complex environments.”
Investors believe the technology could help unlock large-scale commercial adoption of robotics across sectors such as logistics, infrastructure, energy and healthcare.
Dr Manjari Chandran-Ramesh of Amadeus Capital said the evolution of robotics, from static industrial arms to mobile systems operating in human environments, requires a new form of intelligence capable of reasoning over time and context.
Similarly, Oxford Science Enterprises highlighted what it sees as a critical bottleneck in the industry: the inability of current systems to handle long-term planning and operational complexity.
Stateful Robotics is already working with pilot customers in sectors including logistics and infrastructure, where reliability and safety are critical to scaling automation.
The new funding will support expansion of its engineering team, further development of its performance engine and broader commercial rollout with industrial partners.
The spinout also reflects the continued strength of the UK’s deep-tech ecosystem, with Oxford University Innovation playing a key role in supporting the company’s formation and early development.
As robotics hardware becomes increasingly mature, attention is shifting to the software and intelligence layers required to make systems truly autonomous.
Stateful Robotics is betting that solving the “memory and planning” problem will be the key to turning promising prototypes into dependable, large-scale solutions, and, in doing so, unlocking the next phase of the automation revolution.
Read more:
Oxford spinout Stateful robotics raises $4.8m to tackle real-world AI for robots
