A research lab called Enigma is stepping out of stealth on Monday with a $71 million seed round and a plan to let anyone in the world command more than 100 of its own AI robots over the internet. The company, less than a year old, wants to figure out the most natural way for humans to talk to machines.
The seed round was co-led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital. Sarah Guo of Conviction Partners also participated. The funding is unusually large for a seed-stage company, reflecting investor appetite for the next wave of robotics.
Enigma’s robots are housed in hangars in Israel and California. They can draw with a paintbrush, fight with swords, and perform simple chemistry experiments by mixing flasks of liquids. The company says it developed both the robotic arms and the underlying models entirely from scratch.
Outsiders with a different starting point
Jonathan Jacobi and Gal Niv co-founded Enigma last year. They met as young teens competing in hacking competitions and later served together in Israel’s elite Unit 8200, where they conducted cybersecurity research. Jacobi was Microsoft’s youngest-ever employee and was recruited there by Wiz founder Assaf Rappaport. Neither co-founder had a background in robotics.
Shardul Shah, a partner at Index Ventures, said that lack of experience is an advantage. “There are a lot of robotics industry insiders participating in the next wave of embodied intelligence, but Jonathan and Gal are outsiders — they’re not roboticists. It affords them more room for originality,” Shah told TechCrunch reporter Marina Temkin.
Shah contrasted Enigma’s approach with that of traditional robotics companies. “Someone who’s an insider may start with the capability of teleoperation or dexterity, but Enigma is starting from a very different place: ‘What’s the ultimate experience?’”
The interface problem
Jacobi believes current robot interfaces are frustrating. He compared them to adjusting a car’s volume by setting a percentage without knowing what the result will sound like. “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 said. “Right now, everyone is at that point — even with the most capable models.”
Enigma’s large-scale online experiment will test different communication methods. Users will be able to interact with the robots via text, audio, video examples, or tap, drag, and drop commands. The company hopes the data will reveal what Jacobi calls an interface equivalent to a car’s volume knob for robotics.
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“We’re going to learn a lot about what is the right way to interact with robots,” Jacobi said. “Do we want to just talk to them over text or audio? Do we want to show them an example as a video? Or maybe do we want to tap, drag, and drop?”
Jacobi admitted the experiment is very open-ended. The startup’s business use case remains uncertain, and he declined to share specific applications.
Building the team
Enigma assembled its team from Israel’s tech ecosystem. The group includes alumni from top AI labs, winners of math Olympiads, and people who dropped out of PhD programs to join. Jacobi and Niv said they were drawn to robotics because it still holds exciting unsolved problems, despite their lack of direct experience in the field.
The company is already partnering with businesses in healthcare, logistics, and entertainment, though Jacobi declined to share specific use cases for Enigma’s AI.
Multiple robotics companies are now working on foundation models for tasks that robots were not explicitly trained on. Some study web videos, others use computer simulations, and some collect motion data from humans wearing sensor gloves. Enigma’s focus is different: it prioritizes human-robot interaction over pure model capabilities.
What comes next
Enigma’s experiment will be open to anyone worldwide. The company hopes that by observing how people naturally try to command robots, it can build interfaces that require no training or explanation. Jacobi argued that if users spend 15 minutes explaining tasks, they give up and do it themselves.
The $71 million seed round gives Enigma runway to run the experiment and iterate on its findings. The company’s name hints at the mystery it is trying to solve: how to make human-robot communication as effortless as turning a knob.