Avatar Robotics raises $6.5M to scale VR-controlled warehouse robots

Avatar Robotics, founded by former MIT student Colin Webb, closed a $6.5 million seed round with investors including AlleyCorp, Defy.vc, Headline and Henry Ford III. The company deploys wheeled robots equipped with dual arms in warehouses, where remote operators control them through Meta Quest headsets and handheld controllers. Operators, hired as contractors in Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines, earn between $5 and $20 per hour, and the service is billed to customers at a rate below traditional labor costs.

Since its launch in December, the fleet has packed nearly one million items across multiple facilities, while each session records visual and control data to improve the robots' AI models. Avatar sources its hardware from Chinese manufacturers but plans to eventually build its own machines, viewing new FCC rules on foreign-made robotics as an opportunity. The firm aims to grow from dozens of robots per client this year to hundreds next year, ultimately creating a large, semi-autonomous industrial workforce.