Dyna Robotics

“You know you’ve got product-market fit when your robot looks like [garbage] but customers still love it.” :)

Be part of the amazing things we are doing! https://lnkd.in/gZi_75Df

When you spend enough time in the trenches of automation, you start to see the patterns. High-capex #humanoids chasing #generalintelligence like it’s a pot of gold, bleeding cash on bipedal cosplay while the real opportunity is sitting right in front of us, stationary, repetitive, and worth billions. That’s where Dyna Robotics comes in. And trust me, they’re not here to play house with robots; they’re here to put machines to work. Founded in 2024 by a team that already has exits and elite research on their resumes, Dyna isn’t a science experiment, it’s a calculated strike on inefficiency. CEO Lindon Gao and co-founder York Yang already turned heads (and registers) with Caper AI, which scaled to 15,000+ deployed units before Instacart scooped it for $350M. Now they’ve teamed up with Jason Ma, a former #DeepMind and #NVIDIA robotics scientist who speaks fluent #ICRA, #CORL, and #PyTorch. Together, they’re building affordable #dualarmrobots that don’t just learn, they master. And now, they’ve locked in a $23.5M seed round, co-led by CRV and First Round Capital. That’s not “friends and family” money, that’s Max Gazor and Bill Trenchard writing checks and betting big on execution over aspiration. Gazor praised their ability to get sh*t done. Trenchard called out the one-two punch of price and performance. This is a team that prototypes fast, trains smarter, and gets product to market while others are still pitching slide decks about “robot emotions.” Dyna’s platform is pure substance. Hardware that’s built to work, not wow. Software that fuses vision and touch, trained on real-world grunt work like #packaging and #foodprep. #Foundationmodels? Yeah, they’ve got those but not in a lab with 50 #GPUs guessing what a cucumber feels like. These models are grounded, trained on real data from real environments, designed to dominate one task at a time. They’re not chasing #AGI; they’re chasing #reliability, #scalability, and #deploymentvelocity. The cost? $50k–$100k per unit. Which makes your six-figure #humanoidstartup look like it’s still stuck in pitch day fantasy land. Dyna is going after the real $600B+ opportunity, the silent majority of tasks no one wants to talk about because they’re boring, messy, and hard to scale. But that’s where the money is. And Dyna’s aiming to master 5–10 #foundationaltasks by 2026, with North American #manufacturing and #logistics as their opening move. They're not building Jetsons. They’re building workhorses. And they’re hiring. #AI, #robotics, #fullstack; Redwood City’s heating up. Because when you mix DeepMind precision with retail battle scars and some very real market timing, you don’t get buzz. You get Dyna. #Startups #StartupFunding #Robotics #RobotTech #DeepTech #VentureCapital #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem

Getting to back exceptional founders a second time around is one of the most rewarding parts of this job — it means you know exactly where they’ll spike and what they’ll bring to the table (and that your team was at least helpful enough to warrant another first call). When Lindon Gao and York Yang told me they were tackling robotics next, I was instantly intrigued. At First Round Capital, we were fortunate to work closely with this founding team as they built Caper (an investment that my partner Hayley Bay Barna led for us). They were acquired by Instacart in 2021 after displaying a tremendous amount of grit and developing unique expertise at the intersection of hardware and software. Jason Ma is also joining as a co-founder, an excellent addition as a former DeepMind research scientist — his research is very impressive. There’s no sugarcoating that robotics is notoriously tough. But I’ve long been interested in the space and have been excited by recent developments. We're witnessing a massive shift from conditional models that chase edge cases to generative AI that can learn and develop a model of the world — the same breakthrough powering recent advances in self-driving. So I went very deep here last year, meeting with dozens and dozens of companies building with very different approaches. Dyna Robotics was by far and away the one that had me feeling most excited. While others chase humanoid robots with astronomical price tags, Dyna is taking a practical approach, mastering one task at a time with affordable, stationary robotic arms that companies can actually deploy today. It’s a specific → general play, focusing on one task at a time (like folding or food preparation) that allows models to learn and improve in production environments, collecting the real-world data needed to build toward general-purpose robots. The ultimate vision is to build robots that can do anything that people want them to do. It’s a big swing — but this is the founding team to do it. This team is moving super fast (and hiring quickly as well). More news on their $23.5M seed round (which we are excited to co-lead with Max Gazor at CRV) below.

Excited to share CRV's investment in Dyna Robotics. Dyna Robotics has a practical strategy: mastering specific tasks and applications, skill by skill, application by application. Think about robots that can expertly fold laundry, grocery task automation—specialized tasks tackled by affordable, stationary robotic arms. Why does this matter? Because real-world robots thrive on simplicity and effectiveness. By focusing intensely on individual tasks and building comprehensive, task-specific datasets, Dyna Robotics is paving the way for embodied AI systems that genuinely work—and keep improving. Lindon Gao and York Yang previously revolutionized retail tech at Caper AI, exiting to Instacart for $350M, and Jason Ma groundbreaking research at DeepMind and NVIDIA has redefined robotic learning. Max Gazor and I at CRV are thrilled to partner with Bill Trenchard at First Round Capital to work with a team that's not just innovating but redefining what practical robotics can achieve.

Excited to finally announce Dyna Robotics $23.5M seed round co-led by CRV and First Round Capital. Big thanks to Sharon Goldman for breaking the news! https://lnkd.in/gwx5vCtf Yes, robotics is becoming a crowded field. However, current technical challenges significantly hinder the widespread commercial viability of robots. Most robotic foundation models today operate at just 10-30% of human-level speeds, impacting productivity on high-speed production lines. They also lack generalization capabilities, requiring extensive data collection even for minor environmental or task variations. Additionally, robot hardware remains expensive and insufficiently durable, limiting deployments to scenarios where ROI is easily justified... And these are just a few of the issues. After conversations with hundreds of potential customers, we discovered that people don’t care about fancy designs—they just want robots to perform reliably, maintain high throughput, and deliver clear ROI. To succeed, we knew we had to simplify by deciding what not to do (at least initially): - No legs: Over 60% of manual tasks involve repetitive actions with minimal mobility. - No human-like grippers: Complex finger designs significantly raise costs without proportional benefits. - No unrealistic expectations: Customers prefer robots excelling at one task (instead of many) repeatedly, reliably, and efficiently. We believe mastery of one beats mediocrity in many. We’re laser-focused on achieving general-purpose capabilities by perfecting one task at a time. Today, we’re bringing cost-effective, easy-to-deploy robotics solutions to businesses of all sizes. How do you know you have product-market fit? When your robot looks like shit but delivers so much value that customers happily pay for it.

Our firm's newest peeps are Lindon Gao, York Yang, Jason Ma and the Dyna Robotics crew. Welcome to the family team! Great post from my co-workers Max Gazor and Brian Zhan today about CRV's latest investment. https://lnkd.in/duweMfrP

Excited to finally announce Dyna Robotics $23.5M seed round co-led by CRV and First Round Capital. Big thanks to Sharon Goldman for breaking the news! https://lnkd.in/gwx5vCtf Yes, robotics is becoming a crowded field. However, current technical challenges significantly hinder the widespread commercial viability of robots. Most robotic foundation models today operate at just 10-30% of human-level speeds, impacting productivity on high-speed production lines. They also lack generalization capabilities, requiring extensive data collection even for minor environmental or task variations. Additionally, robot hardware remains expensive and insufficiently durable, limiting deployments to scenarios where ROI is easily justified... And these are just a few of the issues. After conversations with hundreds of potential customers, we discovered that people don’t care about fancy designs—they just want robots to perform reliably, maintain high throughput, and deliver clear ROI. To succeed, we knew we had to simplify by deciding what not to do (at least initially): - No legs: Over 60% of manual tasks involve repetitive actions with minimal mobility. - No human-like grippers: Complex finger designs significantly raise costs without proportional benefits. - No unrealistic expectations: Customers prefer robots excelling at one task (instead of many) repeatedly, reliably, and efficiently. We believe mastery of one beats mediocrity in many. We’re laser-focused on achieving general-purpose capabilities by perfecting one task at a time. Today, we’re bringing cost-effective, easy-to-deploy robotics solutions to businesses of all sizes. How do you know you have product-market fit? When your robot looks like shit but delivers so much value that customers happily pay for it.

We are so excited to share the news! https://lnkd.in/gwx5vCtf