Walden Robotics raises $300M Series A at $1.1B

The company describes the round as a seed financing, not a Series A, and AlleyWatch's own monthly data files it under early-stage. Toyota (through its parent, Toyota Invention Partners and Toyota Ventures) and Deviation Capital co-led it. Other participants include Prologis Ventures, CoreWeave Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Calibrate Ventures and Squarepoint Capital. Walden spun out of Toyota Research Institute in January 2026. MIT professor Russ Tedrake is CEO, and its robots are wheeled, two-armed machines that run on large behavior models. The Boston Globe, citing PitchBook, called it one of the largest robotics deals in Boston's history, behind only Motional. Tedrake says he chose wheels over legs because factory safety standards for walking robots are not yet mature. Figure and Apptronik have drawn the biggest humanoid rounds so far. For AI founders, the signal is the investor mix. Customers, chipmakers, a compute provider and a logistics landlord are funding a company that already has robots in production. Physical AI buyers appear to prefer narrower hardware that ships over general humanoid demos. Early revenue evidence and strategic backers are now setting seed valuations in this category.