AICA secures seed investment

From battery recycling to laboratory automation. AICA is driving the next generation of robotics with AI

Lausanne, Switzerland, March 18, 2025 - Swiss startup AICA has successfully closed a seed funding round led by Momenta, the leading venture capital firm for industrial innovation. Existing investors Spicehaus, HTGF and Schaeffler also participated in the round. AICA intends to use the fresh capital to further develop its AI-supported automation technology and expand internationally.

Solution for a central problem in robotics

Programming industrial robots is often complicated and expensive - the development costs often double the price of the hardware. This is where AICA comes in with an AI-based control system that enables simpler and more cost-efficient robotics implementation through sensor-based real-time control. Companies such as Schaeffler are already using the technology for applications in assembly, polishing or battery disassembly.

Advantages of AICA technology

• Real-time sensor control for more flexible robotics applications
• Networking of hardware, sensors and AI software to bring innovations into production faster
• Accelerated implementation from prototypes to series production with the modular AICA Studio platform

AI as a driver of the next generation of robotics

Current robotic systems are often limited by complicated interfaces and a lack of standardization, meaning that their applications are usually restricted to simple pick-and-place tasks. This is where AICA comes in with a novel control approach that combines motion control, force control and AI-controlled impedance control.

Our technology builds bridges between research and industry, between software and hardware - and ultimately between robots and humans.

Enrico Eberhard, Co-Founder and CTO of AICA

AICA also closes an important gap in the industry: while AI models such as those from NVIDIA Omniverse are trained in simulations, the transfer to real hardware often fails due to a lack of standards. AICA offers a universal control platform that adapts AI-controlled robotics safely and in real time.

Areas of application beyond the industry

In addition to the automotive industry, AICA shows potential in other areas: In the Eurostars-funded LAMBDA project, the company is developing automated processes for dismantling electric vehicle batteries - a decisive step towards a sustainable circular economy. Interest in flexible robotic solutions is also growing in laboratory automation for the chemical and life science industries.

AICA will present its solutions at the NVIDIA GTC AI Conference in San Jose in March 2025. With live demonstrations, the startup will show how its approach will make robotics smarter and more flexible.