Minerva Raises About $10 Million for Human-Controlled Robots Built for Dangerous Jobs

Minerva Humanoids emerged from stealth on October 6, 2026, with approximately $10 million in pre-seed funding for robots designed to put distance between specialists and dangerous work. General Catalyst led the round, with Long Journey Ventures and Credo Ventures as co-leads. Its first robot, Roger, targets hazardous energy operations and public-safety tasks, including explosive ordnance disposal.

The company plans to begin its first paid pilots in fall 2026. It says the financing will advance its hardware and AI capabilities for energy work and bomb disposal, supporting deployments later this year. Other investors include Hugging Face, Compound and MVP Ventures.

AI handles movement; the specialist stays in command

Roger is semi-autonomous: a person directs the work while software handles parts of the robot’s movement. According to Minerva, a specialist uses a VR headset to see through Roger’s eyes and perform fine manipulation. The company’s Minerva Intelligence system manages balance, fall recovery and navigation, translating the operator’s input into physical action.

Minerva says operators remain in charge of every critical action and can learn full-body control in minutes. Those are company claims, not independently verified operating results. The design is intended to preserve trained workers’ judgment and dexterity while placing the machine, rather than their bodies, in hazardous settings.

We didn't set out to replace the people doing them. We set out to build a robot that lets them do the job efficiently from the comfort of their office or home, without asking them to risk their lives for our safety or our energy.

Sandor Felber, CEO and co-founder of Minerva Humanoids

A prototype built across two countries

Felber previously worked on Tesla’s Optimus program and helped launch MIT CSAIL’s research on AI-powered humanoids. Co-founder and chief technology officer Maurice Rahme spent six years at Boston Dynamics, where he was a technical lead on Stretch, helping take it from an early prototype to a commercially deployed product.

Minerva says it went from an idea to a fully functional walking humanoid in five months. Its software and AI are primarily developed in the United States; the first Roger prototypes were manufactured and assembled in Germany. It plans production in both countries, without relying on single-source Chinese components.

Airport testing and research before paid pilots

Before its public launch, Minerva completed a showcase and keynote at NATO’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Centre of Excellence in Samorin, Slovakia. The company also says it is exploring deployments at two of the world’s 10 busiest airports and has completed on-site testing focused on high-risk public-safety applications.

Two research partnerships address different parts of the intended work. Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence will collaborate on humanoid capabilities for the energy sector. The University of Waterloo partnership focuses on perception in smoke, darkness, sensor failure and other environments where normal vision is unavailable.