Maven Robotics emerged from two years of quiet customer work with $100M in Series A funding, betting that general-purpose arms can handle the mixed palletising and tote handling that warehouses still do by hand.
RoboStrategy, a closed-end robotics fund listed on Nasdaq in May, led the round. LocalGlobe, Vine Ventures and XTX Ventures also participated. Earlier backers had put $18M into the Santa Clara company before this round.
The founding team carries serious pedigree. Hamza Derbas, the chief executive, spent nine years inside Apple’s secretive special projects division, widely believed to have been working on an autonomous car until the iPhone maker wound it down in 2024. Khalid Derbas, his brother and Maven’s finance chief, arrived from private equity, and the wider staff includes alumni of Tesla, Rivian and Zoox.
Maven’s robots lift up to 30 kilograms with vacuum grippers, move on wheeled bases and run at 99% uptime across 16-hour shifts, Derbas said. Fleets now operate autonomously at a Fortune 250 consumer goods company.
The startup puts its initial palletising market at $80B and sees a path to more than $1T as it moves into assembly and more complex material handling. The new money funds 250 third-generation robots and early design work on a fourth.
Maven estimates its fleet will pass 100,000 hours of autonomous operation by the end of the year and one million by the end of 2027.
