An American humanoid robotics startup based in Austin, Texas, creator of the Apollo platform. Spin-off of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, founded in 2016.
Apptronik, Inc. is an American humanoid robotics startup headquartered in Austin, Texas, founded in March 2016 as a spin-off of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. The five-person founding team consisted of Jeff Cardenas (CEO), Nick Paine (CTO), Luis Sentis (scientific advisor and UT Austin professor), Bill Helmsing and Bill Welch. The company built on the UT Series Elastic Actuator that Paine had developed in his graduate work and applied it to actuators for humanoid robots. In August 2023 Apptronik unveiled the Apollo platform — a general-purpose humanoid robot designed to work alongside humans in manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and retail. Apollo is available in two mobility variants (bipedal and wheeled) and is being commercially deployed with partners such as Mercedes-Benz (manufacturing), GXO Logistics, NASA and Jabil. In February 2025 the company closed a $350M Series A round led by B Capital and Capital Factory with participation from Google, bringing total funding to approximately $963M. Apptronik employs roughly 150 people (2025). The company was named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list in 2025 and 2026, received the IEEE Robotics & Automation Product Innovation Award 2025, the Forbes Most Innovative Companies 2025 ranking and the Best Workplace Innovators 2024 and Best Places to Work 2025 awards.
Founders
Co-founder and CEO of Apptronik. Before founding the company in 2016 he worked at the Global Commercialization Group at the IC² Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, helping commercialize technology innovations.
Robotics engineer with a Ph.D. He earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. His graduate work focused on the UT Series Elastic Actuator — a compact, high-performance actuator for robotics that became the foundation of Apptronik's technology.
Professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Human Centered Robotics Lab from which Apptronik was spun off. Expert in humanoid robot control and human-robot interaction.
Co-founder of Apptronik from 2016, part of the original team of five co-founders rooted in the University of Texas at Austin environment.
Co-founder of Apptronik from 2016, the fifth member of the original UT Austin founding team.
Classification
