Brussels-based robotics startup Motion has raised $2 million (about €1.7 million) in pre-seed funding to expand its Humanoids-as-a-Service (HaaS) platform and move five industrial pilots into full commercial deployment across Europe. The round was led by Extantia Capital with participation from Norrsken Evolve.
The 'Robot Adoption Problem'
Motion's thesis is that humanoids are not stalled by hardware — they are stalled by integration. Rather than asking manufacturers to buy robots and build in-house robotics expertise, Motion charges a single monthly fee that bundles robot selection, task training, IT integration, fleet management, financing, insurance, compliance and maintenance.
"Europe has a robot adoption problem. Adoption fails on financing, risk and compliance long before it fails on technology," said founder and CEO Alexander Stevens. "Hiring a robot should be as easy as hiring a person."
Five Live Pilots In Belgium
Motion is currently running five pilots with Belgian industrial, warehouse and logistics customers, training humanoids to load goods into crates, pack containers into boxes and place components on conveyor belts alongside human workers. The company is hardware-agnostic, letting customers mix robots from different vendors while retaining control of their own operational data.
A Deployment Layer Around The Robots
Motion is also launching a partner programme for system integrators and automation specialists to deploy humanoids on its platform, aiming to make deployment expertise its own defensible layer. The move mirrors a broader European push to commercialize embodied AI — see China's UBTECH, Galbot and AGIBOT locking in factory orders and Pollen Robotics' $399 Microduck reinforcement-learning platform.
What The Money Buys
New capital will move Motion's five pilots into full production, expand the team and grow its robot fleet, starting across the Benelux region and targeting hundreds of deployments over the next year.
Reporting based on coverage from Tech.eu, EU-Startups and Tech Startups.