Enigma raises $70 million to make robots as easy to control as a volume knob

Key points

• Enigma, a robotics AI startup, raised $70 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital.
• The less-than-one-year-old company emerged from stealth on Monday with more than 100 robots housed in hangars in Israel and California.
• Anyone in the world can interact with those robots online as part of a large-scale experiment on how humans prefer to communicate with machines.
• Co-founders Jonathan Jacobi and Gal Niv met in hacking competitions as teenagers and later worked together in Israel's elite military cybersecurity unit, Unit 8200.
• Enigma is already partnering with companies in healthcare, logistics, and entertainment, though specific products have not been announced.

A brand-new robotics startup thinks the biggest unsolved problem in AI is not making robots smarter. It is making them easier to talk to.

Enigma, which emerged from stealth Monday, has raised $70 million in seed funding to study how humans naturally want to communicate with machines. Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital led the round, with Sarah Guo of Conviction Partners also participating. First reported by TechCrunch AI, the raise is one of the largest seed rounds in robotics this year.

What is Enigma actually doing?

Enigma is running a public experiment. Starting now, anyone with an internet connection can log on and give instructions to one of more than 100 physical robots the company has built from scratch.

Those robots, sitting in hangars in Israel and California, can paint pictures, fence with small swords, and mix liquids in flasks like a chemistry student. Enigma says it designed both the robot arms and the underlying AI models, the software that decides how the robot moves and responds, entirely in-house. The company is watching how people try to communicate: do they type? Talk? Upload a short video showing what they want? Tap and drag on a screen?

The goal is to find what co-founder Jonathan Jacobi calls the robotics equivalent of a car volume knob. Turning a dial is instant and obvious. Nobody has to think about it. Jacobi argues that controlling a robot should feel the same way.

"If you had to do your dishes and spent 15 minutes explaining to a robot where to put everything, everyone reaches the point of 'Forget it, I'll just do it myself,'" Jacobi told TechCrunch AI. "Right now, everyone is at that point, even with the most capable models."

Who built this company?

Jacobi became Microsoft's youngest-ever employee after being recruited by Wiz founder Asaf Rappaport. His co-founder, Gal Niv, is a longtime friend from their teenage years competing in hacking competitions. Both later served in Unit 8200, Israel's elite military cybersecurity and intelligence unit, a common launchpad for Israeli tech founders.

Neither has a robotics background. Index Ventures partner Shardul Shah says that is a feature, not a bug. "Someone who's an insider may start with the capability of teleoperation or dexterity, but Enigma is starting from a very different place," Shah said.

The team includes alumni from top AI research labs, winners of international mathematics competitions, and several researchers who left PhD programs to join.

What does this mean for ordinary people?

Nothing immediate. Enigma has no consumer product yet, and its business plan remains thin on detail. Jacobi confirmed the company is working with partners in healthcare, logistics, and entertainment, but declined to name them or describe specific use cases.

What the experiment does offer is a rare chance to actually shape how future robots work. If you visit Enigma's platform and try to boss a robot around, your interaction becomes data that may influence how the next generation of home or workplace robots behaves. That is a modest but genuine stake in the outcome.