While robotics giants chase humanoid robots, MicroFactory just raised $1.5 million for something radically different - a dog crate-sized manufacturing station that learns by watching humans work. The San Francisco startup now sits at a $30 million valuation with hundreds of preorders for its compact factory-in-a-box.
MicroFactory is flipping the robotics playbook. While everyone else races to build human-sized robots or automate entire warehouses, this San Francisco startup thinks the real opportunity is much smaller - literally the size of a dog crate.
The company just closed a $1.5 million pre-seed round that values the year-old startup at $30 million post-money. Investors include executives from AI powerhouse Hugging Face and entrepreneur Naval Ravikant, betting that compact manufacturing is the future.
"General purpose robots are good, but it's not necessary to be humanoid," CEO Igor Kulakov told TechCrunch. "We decided to design robots from scratch that will still be general purpose but not in human shape, and this way, it can be done much simpler."
The breakthrough isn't just size - it's how these robots learn. Instead of complex programming, users physically guide the dual robotic arms through manufacturing sequences. The system watches, learns, and replicates with precision that Kulakov says beats traditional AI training for intricate tasks like circuit board assembly and component soldering.
"Usually it takes a couple hours, but in this way, the robot much better understands what it should do," Kulakov explained. "When you hire people, we still need to spend time, like a week or something, to instruct these people. A manufacturing company already has this time and resources to spend, and it'll be much easier to train a model this way."
The inspiration came from personal frustration. Kulakov and co-founder Viktor Petrenko previously ran bitLighter, manufacturing portable lighting for photographers. Training new employees on complex assembly processes was a constant headache. When AI advances made automation feasible, they pivoted completely.
Launching MicroFactory in 2024, the duo built their prototype in just five months. Now they're sitting on hundreds of preorders from customers planning everything from electronics assembly to processing snails for French restaurants - yes, escargot production made the list.
The transparent workstation design lets manufacturers watch their robots work in real-time, handling precision tasks that typically require human dexterity. Each unit comes as a complete factory-in-a-box, eliminating the complexity of integrating separate robotic components.
