Path Robotics Raises $300 Million at $2.45 Billion Valuation for Factory Physical AI

Bloomberg said the round nearly quadruples Path's valuation. The company said it has raised more than $610 million since it was founded in 2018.

The size of the round shows how much investors will now pay for "physical AI" in manufacturing: software that lets robots handle skilled, variable factory tasks instead of fixed, repeated motions. Path is selling that capability to US manufacturers in shipbuilding and defence, heavy equipment and energy infrastructure. It said the new money will take its platform beyond welding into other manufacturing tasks and new types of robot, and will fund more spending on AI model training, compute and data.

Existing investors Addition, Drive Capital, IronArc Ventures, Tiger Global and Yamaha Motor Ventures and its affiliates joined the round, as did new backers D. E. Shaw Ventures and NAVER Ventures. Emily Walsh, a partner at Georgian, will join Path's board.

The company did not disclose revenue. It said annual recurring revenue has grown 17-fold over the past 18 months, its workforce has grown 97 percent from a year earlier, and it plans to have 400 employees by the end of the year.

Path's core product is Obsidian, a physical AI model that identifies weld joints, plans and carries out welds, and adjusts as conditions change. Its Rove system pairs Obsidian with a four-legged robot so the welding can move around a site instead of staying in a fixed cell.

Customers named in the release include HII, Lockheed Martin and Saronic, plus mid-sized manufacturers EK Machine, Millerbernd Manufacturing Company, TransAmerican Power Products and TYCROP. Earlier this year Path announced a $600 million performance-based production agreement with HII to speed up the use of physical AI across US Navy shipbuilding programmes.

"We started with welding because it is one of the hardest jobs on the factory floor to automate," said Andy Lonsberry, Path's chief executive and co-founder. He said the company's aim is to automate the whole factory, not a single step.

"We believe Path Robotics is well positioned to become one of the defining companies in industrial physical AI," Walsh said. She argued that Path's proprietary models and production data give it an advantage that will be hard to match.

Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures, said in the release that "scaling production requires innovative approaches" as demand for defence systems grows. Path's next test is whether its expansion beyond welding can match the growth of its core product, as it hires towards the 400-person target by year-end.