Linear Capital Pre-Seed project Swiss-Mile closed a $22 million seed round, led by Bezos Expeditions and HSG.

Swiss-Mile, a startup in embodied AI and robotics, recently announced a $22 million seed round led by Bezos Expeditions — Jeff Bezos's investment fund — and HSG, with participation from the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and Armada Investment. Existing investor Linear Capital also increased its stake. The Swiss-Mile team said it will work with these investors to continue developing and delivering embodied AI products that improve more people's lives.

Founded in April 2023, Swiss-Mile aims to bridge AI and the physical world by creating truly autonomous robots that take over repetitive and physically demanding tasks for humans. Its core team originated at the ETH RSL lab (see reference 1) and has been at the forefront of integrating AI with wheeled-legged robots — NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang showcased its embodied AI products during his 2022 GTC keynote (see reference 2), and the Swiss-Mile team previously demonstrated real-world applications as part of the winning team at the DARPA SubT Challenge, known as the "Super Bowl of robotics" (see references 3 and 4).

Cutting-Edge Technology

The company's core philosophy combines frontier technology, rapid and effective scaling, and customer-centricity. The most challenging problems in embodied AI are mobility, autonomy, and manipulation. Swiss-Mile has assembled talent from across the embodied AI and robotics fields and remains dedicated to solving these problems. Its current products enable robots to walk, drive, stand upright on two legs, and use wheeled end effectors to handle parcel packaging, transportation, and other tasks. These capabilities highlight the practical value of Swiss-Mile's years of research in embodied AI, while also allowing its products to better address the challenges robots face in real-world mobility and control. Mobile robots with these features will lead the next wave of automation in the post-robotic-arm era.

"Swiss-Mile has developed industry-leading products by leveraging its cutting-edge algorithms and deep research in end-to-end solutions," said Xin Fu, partner at HSG. "We are very excited about the technical progress the company has made, and we believe it will play a leading role in the transformation of the embodied AI industry."

Rapid, Effective Scaling

Swiss-Mile's technical strengths lay a solid foundation for product scaling. By integrating reinforcement learning and supervised learning into a unified framework, Swiss-Mile enables robots to learn autonomously from scratch, adapt and adjust based on real-world deployment, and generate new robot behaviors at low cost and at scale — continuously improving based on data collected from both physical and synthetic environments. This versatile AI framework, independent of any specific robot hardware, can serve as the "brain" that empowers all robots. For example, Swiss-Mile can currently train a new neural network for different robot hardware in just one week.

"The Swiss-Mile founding team are themselves pioneers in embodied AI, and the company stands out among global embodied AI innovators," said Harry Wang, founder and CEO of Linear Capital. "What excites me most is that the Swiss-Mile team has had an international vision and customer-centric mindset from day one. They have the ability to leverage global resources to become a leading force in the next wave of transformation combining AI with the physical world."

Customer-Centric Approach

At the same time, Swiss-Mile places heavy emphasis on delivering value to customers. The team has already begun pilot integrations with select clients, putting embodied AI through rigorous testing in diverse and complex physical environments. Notably, just one month after its founding, the company deployed its first robot for last-mile delivery. Since then, it has engaged with a broader range of customers in areas such as inspection and logistics, attempting to address the mounting global challenge of labor shortages — a problem that could impose a $10 trillion economic burden on countries facing workforce shortfalls (see reference 5).

"Swiss-Mile is developing innovative solutions for real-world problems, bringing its expertise to various industries through embodied AI and robotics," said Franziska Bossart, head of the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund. "We see how Swiss-Mile's technical achievements could help Amazon in the future, and the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund is pleased to support this team."

Daniel S. Aegerter, founder and CEO of Armada Investment, said: "The combination of AI technology with low-cost, high-performance hardware will unlock rich productivity use cases and possibilities for autonomous robots, signaling that a new era of economic production may be upon us. We are very excited about the opportunities we see. Swiss-Mile is an innovator and leader in this emerging field, with the ability to attract more talent and the ambition and vision to become an industry rule-maker. Beyond its outstanding technical achievements, the team continuously strives to deliver value to customers — we believe this culture and philosophy will keep Swiss-Mile competitive for a long time to come."

Now Hiring

Swiss-Mile is currently hiring (see reference 6). If you're interested in embodied AI and robotics, you're welcome to check out its open positions and join the team. If your business has needs for mobile robot solutions in security, inspection, construction, or logistics, you're also welcome to contact the Swiss-Mile sales team (see reference 7) to join its Beta program.

References:

1. ETH RSL lab: https://rsl.ethz.ch/
2. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang showcasing Swiss-Mile embodied AI products at 2022 GTC keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39ubNuxnrK8
3. DARPA SubT Challenge called the "Super Bowl of robotics": https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/11/10/darpa-robot-competition/
4. Swiss-Mile team demonstration as part of DARPA SubT Challenge winning team: https://www.subt-cerberus.org/
5. Labor shortages could impose $10 trillion economic burden on affected countries: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2014/people-organization-human-resources-global-workforce-crisis
6. Job openings: https://jobs.lever.co/swiss-mile
7. Contact Swiss-Mile sales team: https://share-eu1.hsforms.com/1A4nU3goUTMGMzd2vy0vciw2e3jez

About Linear Capital

Linear Capital is an early-stage investment firm focused on "frontier technology + industry" — that is, frontier technologies such as data intelligence, digital new infrastructure, next-generation robotics, and new technological transformations in traditional fields (such as biomedicine, materials, and energy), applied across vertical industries to dramatically improve industrial efficiency, empower companies to solve pain points, and complete industrial upgrades — achieving outsized commercial returns through substantial increases in industrial value. The firm currently manages ten funds with total AUM of approximately $2 billion.

Its investment stage focuses primarily on leading angel to Series A rounds, with check sizes ranging from $1 million to $10 million (or RMB equivalent).

Linear Capital has made early investments in more than 120 startup teams, including Horizon Robotics, Kujiale, Sensors Data, Tezign, Rokid, Guandata, and Agile Robots. The combined valuation of its portfolio companies is approximately $20 billion.

In the near term, Linear Capital is working to become the best "Data Intelligence Technology Fund." In the long term, it aims to gradually build itself into the most influential "Frontier Technology Application Fund."