Antioch prepares to accelerate simulation testing of autonomous robots after raising $8.5M

Antioch Inc., a developer of cloud-based robotics simulation software powered by artificial intelligence, has raised $8.5 million in funding to accelerate the development of autonomous extraterrestrial systems.

Today’s round, which comes just four months after it raised $4.5 million in pre-seed funding, was led by A* and Category Ventures. Others, including MaC Venture Capital, Abstract, Box Group and Icehouse Ventures also participated, as did angel investors including Shyam Sanker of Palantir Technologies Inc. and Adrian Macnei of Foxglove Inc.

Antioch’s mission is to replace the need for robotics companies to conduct experiments in the physical world using real hardware and well-prepared spaces where they can be placed. In general, ensuring that robots behave as designed in the real world is very expensive and time-consuming. It requires engineers to rent and configure a physical environment with different staging areas, and then reset the hardware after each test. The process is expensive and difficult, and covers only a fraction of the conditions most robots will face once deployed in real-world manufacturing environments.

This is why imitation can be so powerful. By using a combination of physics and rendering engines with more advanced “world models”, it is possible to create digital twins of robots and simulate a physical environment that can be used for experiments instead. But the problem is that this infrastructure is evolving too quickly for most developers to keep up with it, with new models and software tools constantly coming up with new capabilities.

Antioch’s role is to build a “platform layer” that connects autonomous device developers with this wave of continuous innovation. Founder and CEO Harry Mellsop (pictured, far left), who once helped develop Tesla Inc.’s Autopilot software, compares his company to Cursor, a productive AI coding platform that makes the latest AI models quickly available to software developers. Its goal is to do the same for “independent teams” by ensuring they always have access to the most advanced simulation and infrastructure tools for robotics testing.

Specifically, Antioch has developed a cloud simulation platform that enables teams to create digital twins of any type of robot, so they can quickly validate any AI-powered system before it is deployed in the real world. The goal is to eliminate testing cycles that slow down the robot’s development. So instead of spending hours resetting the robot or moving it from one location to another, engineers can just click a few buttons to get it ready for the next test. In addition, they can perform thousands of experiments in parallel by spinning multiple digital twins of their robots at the same time.

“Robotics teams spend weeks building warehouses and investing millions in testing facilities to validate their systems,” Mellsop told SiliconANGLE. “Right now, companies like Tesla, Waymo and Anduril are spending hundreds of millions a year on simulation infrastructure to mitigate just that. We think all private parties should get to that level of tools.”

Mellsop and his two co-founders, Alex Langshur (second from right) and Michael Calvey, previously founded a security and intelligence startup called Transpose Inc. acquired by Chainalysis Inc. in 2023. That company grew to serve dozens of US intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the co-founders believe they also worked for Antioch.

Langshur explained that America used to have a huge manufacturing advantage in the world, but it just threw it away by using it far away from the ocean. As a result, it is no longer the manufacturing capital of the world, and that is what the current US administration is trying to fix. “The only economically viable way to revitalize industries is through robots and automation, and heavy testing is a measure to reduce quality,” he stressed.

Mellsop told SiliconANGLE that the potential to do this surpasses even the AI ​​industry that is most important to robotics and automation today. He points out that industries currently being disrupted by AI, such as software, professional services and knowledge work, represent about eight billion dollars of the global economy.

“But manufacturing, transportation, construction, energy and agriculture are worth more than 50 billion dollars,” he said. “The penetration of AI in those industries is essentially zero today. The industrial revolution that comes with virtual AI will not follow the LLM revolution, it will dwarf it.”

Photos: Antioch