Robotics rounds keep flowing

Robots need two things before they do anything useful: a body that can move through the world, and a brain that can make decisions fast enough to avoid crashing into it. This week, investors put fresh money into both layers at once. (cntechpost.com) (businesswire.com) D-Robotics closed a $150 million Series B2 round on April 8, 2026, less than a month after a $120 million Series B1, bringing its total Series B funding to $270 million. The company said the new cash will go into global commercial expansion and its developer ecosystem. (cntechpost.com) D-Robotics is not trying to build every robot itself. It sells the computing layer for robots, which is closer to selling the engine and operating system than selling the whole car. (crunchbase.com) (cntechpost.com) That part of the market is getting attention because every humanoid robot, warehouse machine, delivery bot, and robot dog needs onboard computing that can see, plan, and react in real time. If investors think thousands of robot makers are coming, backing the shared “brains” supplier can look safer than betting on one robot body. (cntechpost.com) (businesswire.com) Manna raised a separate $50 million Series B on March 10, 2026, and said it plans to use the money to expand across the United States and Europe. The round brought Manna’s total funding to $110 million. (businesswire.com) (manna.aero) Manna’s bet is much narrower and much more physical: small autonomous aircraft carrying everyday items over the last mile, which is the expensive final stretch from a store to a customer’s home. It says it has already completed more than 250,000 regulated commercial flights across Ireland, Finland, and Texas. (businesswire.com) (manna.aero) The company is now aiming for scale, with plans for 40 bases in the United States and Europe and delivery partnerships that include Uber, Deliveroo, Just Eat, and DoorDash. That is a sign the pitch is shifting from “look what this drone can do” to “plug this into the apps people already use.” (businesswire.com) (manna.aero) Manna says orders arrive in under three minutes in some markets and that its carbon dioxide emissions are 85 percent lower than road delivery for the trips it replaces. Those are the numbers investors want from robotics in 2026: not a lab demo, but repeat usage, operating history, and unit economics that can survive contact with suburbs. (manna.aero) This is not happening in isolation. In January, Zipline raised $600 million to expand drone delivery in at least four United States states in 2026 after passing 2 million deliveries, which shows that capital is moving into aerial logistics at the same time as money flows into robot infrastructure. (techcrunch.com) Put the two rounds together and the pattern is pretty clear: investors are funding both the picks-and-shovels layer and the use-case layer. One company wants to supply the brains for many kinds of robots, and the other wants to prove one robot service can become everyday infrastructure. (cntechpost.com) (businesswire.com)