Walden launches with $300 million and a factory-floor focus

Walden Robotics emerged from stealth on July 15 with $300 million in seed funding at a $1.1 billion valuation. Toyota and Deviation Capital co-led the round, with NVIDIA, Boeing, Samsung Ventures and other investors participating.

The company spun out of Toyota Research Institute in January and is building general-purpose robots for manufacturing and logistics. Walden says its robots had been performing production work at a Toyota plant in North America since February. Its approach combines large behaviour models with teams that work on deployment in operating facilities. That gives the launch a more specific commercial setting than a laboratory demonstration: adapting machines to tasks inside existing factories. The production claims come from Walden’s announcement, which does not provide an independently audited measure of utilisation or customer returns.