Seed · Robotics · Paris, France · Founded 2025 · 15–30 employees
UMA (Universal Mechanical Assistant) is a Paris-based robotics startup founded in December 2025 by an elite team including CEO Rémi Cadène (ex-Tesla Optimus, co-founder of LeRobot at Hugging Face), CTO Simon Alibert (co-founder of LeRobot), Chief Science Officer Pierre Sermanet (ex-Google Brain/DeepMind), and Chief Robot Officer Robert Knight (25+ years in robotics). The company develops general-purpose mobile and humanoid robots with human-level dexterity, targeting the logistics and manufacturing sectors, with pilot programs planned for 2026. UMA's AI brain is developed in-house using imitation learning and reinforcement learning, designed to run on embedded Nvidia Jetson hardware and eventually coordinate robot fleets via the cloud. The company has secured a notable first seed round backed by investors including Greycroft, Relentless, Unity Growth Fund, Red River West, Factorial, Drysdale, Kima Ventures, and ALM Ventures, plus prominent angel investors such as Yann LeCun, Xavier Niel, Clement Delangue, and Soumith Chintala.