Robotics and data startup Alloy nabs $4.5 million pre-seed funding round fronted by Blackbird

Alloy, which helps robotics teams organise, search and analyse across various types of multimodal robot data in one platform using natural language, has emerged from stealth and secured a $4.5 million pre-seed funding round.

In a LinkedIn post, Founder and CEO Joe Harris, said: “I'm excited to announce Alloy, and our $4.5 million pre-seed round led by Blackbird with support from Airtree, Xtal, Skip Capital and an incredible group of angels, leaders and founders of Tesla, Waymo, Carbon Robotics, Halter, Reach Robotics, Relevance AI and more.”

He claimed that this is “one of the strongest pre-seed rounds ever done in Australia” and added that it was “a testament to the calibre of the team and magnitude of the opportunity”.

“We are building the system for robotics companies to reduce time spent on processing data by up to 90%, enabling 10x faster iteration. Instead of leaving behind 99% of their data in cold storage, teams can continuously improve performance,” he commented.

“This is one of the most pressing problems in robotics: robotics teams are drowning in terabytes of data they can't efficiently search or analyse, forcing every company to build expensive custom infrastructure from scratch. And the problem only gets worse as you scale. When your robot encounters an issue, has it occurred before? How frequently? Will you know if it happens again? You’re often left with more questions than answers, and hundreds of hours of log files to scrub through.”

Harris continued: “Companies like Waymo, Amazon and Tesla have deployed hundreds of engineers at this data infrastructure challenge. We are bringing best-in-class to the world. Alloy allows robotics teams to automatically organise, search and analyse across all types of multimodal robot data in one platform using natural language, without waiting for labels. Instantly summarise missions and share. Unprecedented levels of observability and data accessibility.”

Alloy, whose use cases include warehousing and logistics, is working with robotics companies like Hullbot, Breaker, and Greenroom Robotics.

Harris concluded: “Special thanks to Tom Humphrey at Blackbird, Jackie Vullinghs at Airtree, Fiona Leng at Xtal and Olivia Grivas at Skip Capital for believing in our vision and being great partners on this journey so far. This is just the beginning as we build the layer that is unlocking the next wave of scaled robotics companies. Day one at Alloy.”

2025 RTIH INNOVATION AWARDS

Robotics will be a key focus area at the 2025 RTIH Innovation Awards.

The awards. which are now closed for entries with our finalists and shortlists being announced this week, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

Our 2024 hall of fame entrants were revealed during an event which took place at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London on 21st November, and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by comedian Lucy Porter

In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “The event is now into its sixth year and what a journey it has been. The awards started life as an online only affair during the Covid outbreak, before launching as a small scale in real life event and growing year on year to the point where we’re now selling out this fine, historic venue.”

He added: “Congratulations to all of our finalists. Many submissions did not make it through to the final stage, and getting to this point is no mean feat. Checkout-free stores, automated supply chains, immersive experiences, on-demand delivery, next generation loyalty offerings, inclusive retail, green technology. We’ve got all the cool stuff covered this evening.”

“But just importantly we’ve got lots of great examples of companies taking innovative tech and making it usable in everyday operations - resulting in more efficiency and profitability in all areas.”

Congratulations to our 2024 winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Lucy Porter, and all those who attended November's gathering. 

For further information on the 2025 RTIH Innovation Awards, please fill in the below form and we will get back to you asap.