New Theory
New Theory is a San Francisco-based AI startup founded in 2024 by Christian Shewmake, a researcher from UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience.
About
New Theory is a San Francisco-based AI startup founded in 2024 by Christian Shewmake, a researcher from UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. It builds foundation world models for robotics using geometric deep learning and equivariant architectures, aiming to let robots act in unseen physical situations and learn new tasks quickly.
Comparable companies· by market
This company
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- New Theory
New Theory is a San Francisco-based AI startup founded in 2024 by Christian Shewmake, a researcher from UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. It builds foundation world models for robotics using geometric deep learning and equivariant architectures, aiming to let robots act in unseen physical situations and learn new tasks quickly.
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United States
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- Rhoda AI
Trains industrial robots using AI models trained on public videos, enabling robots to understand object motion and real-world behavior
Series A · $450M · 2026-03 · Valuation $1.7B
$450MValuation $1.7B - General Intuition
Trains "large action" foundation models and general-purpose agents with spatiotemporal reasoning capabilities on action-labeled gameplay footage, and transfers them to real-world embodied systems such as robots, drones and autonomous vehicles.
Undisclosed · $650M · 2026-09 · Valuation $6.2B
$650MValuation $6.2B - Enigma
Cross-embodiment robotics foundation models
Seed · $71M · 2026-07
$71M
China
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- GigaAI
Focuses on R&D of large vision models, embodied foundation models and world model technology
Series B · $584M · 2026-06
$584M - TranscEngram
Embodied AI using memory mechanisms to unify a robot's "brain + cerebellum"; builds explainable embodied control models and physical world models
Angel · 2026-07
— - Xspark AI
Trustworthy embodied intelligence (Physical AI): robot foundation models, real-world data collection and evaluation.
Angel · 2026-07
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Europe
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- Machenta
Foundation models for robots focused on "instant robot learning": performing a new task after a single demonstration
Seed · 2026-10
— - Genesis AI
Builds general-purpose robots and robot foundation models
Seed · $605M · 2025-07
$605M - kausable
Reasoning-first causal AI world models (learning from small amounts of data)
Seed · $15M · 2026-07
$15M
Other / unspecified
BusinessLatest roundTotal raisedDate- Veeda AI
Multimodal foundation world models and physics simulation environments, providing scalable interactive training grounds for robots and other embodied agents
Seed · 2026-08
— - 星源智
Develops on-device embodied brains, embodied multimodal large models, spatial intelligence, and embodied interactive world models for the real physical world
$139M · 2026-06
$139M
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Andreessen Horowitz
14 Vertical Models deals in the last 24 months · 13 in Silicon Valley
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