Munich robotics startup microagi has raised $55 million in a seed round, the largest by a German startup, led by Hummingbird with participation from Northzone, LocalGlobe, Village Global, and redalpine. Founded by former Formula One aerodynamics engineer Bercan Kilic, microagi is developing infrastructure to deploy factory robots at scale. The company aims to become the world's largest firm within five years by targeting the deployment of 20 to 30 million robots. microagi bypasses hardware development to focus on training existing robotics models for manufacturing tasks. The company captures worker motions using camera-equipped gloves and sensors to create datasets that teach AI systems specific industrial skills. This addresses a critical shortage of training data in physical AI, a bottleneck often described by researchers as a massive gap compared to text-based generative models. A key component of microagi's ecosystem is shift, its consumer-facing data collection platform. shift has gained traction by offering free services, including apartment cleaning in New York and private chefs in San Francisco, in exchange for first-person video footage of daily chores. Operating in 15 countries, shift compensates over 20,000 individuals to record tasks, generating the footage microagi sells to AI laboratories. The startup also utilizes this data to refine models for its industrial clients, serving the automotive, logistics, and food sectors. Kilic indicated that five firms are actively collecting data through the platform, with one preparing for initial factory deployment. The investment reflects surging capital flows into physical AI, driven by falling hardware costs and severe labor market shifts. Kilic emphasizes that automation is indispensable for reshoring supply chains and addressing workforce deficits. The European Union's median age reached 44.9 in 2025, with projections forecasting a workforce reduction of up to 18.8 million by 2050. Globally, China installed 295,000 factory robots in 2024, representing 54% of total installations, far outpacing the US figure of 34,200. Reshoring only works if the robots do, Kilic stated. microagi collaborates with AI labs, including partners such as Physical Intelligence and Skild AI, to adapt models using proprietary customer data. Kilic likens the current industry phase to a GPT-2 moment for robotics, where scaling data produces predictable gains, with the sector nearing a GPT-3.5 moment of broad utility. The leadership team includes co-founders Yoan Iliev, formerly of Mercedes F1; Anton Poletaev from the Alan Turing Institute; Nico Nussbaum of RWTH Aachen; and serial entrepreneur Artjem Weissbeck. microagi employs 37 people globally, while shift has roughly 75 staff. Proceeds will fund computing infrastructure for model training, expand the data collection network, and grow US operations. Hummingbird's Firat Ileri highlighted the team's intensity and the strategic necessity of automating European manufacturing as primary factors in the investment. microagi declined to disclose its valuation.