Methods
How we judge
A verdict is only worth something if you can check it. Here is where our numbers come from, what each verdict needs, who signs them off and every correction we have made.
Who signs off
The Robot Fund desk
HipBits · Orph Labs AI, Inc.Every round and verdict is researched and checked by the Robot Fund editorial team before it is published.
Where rounds come from
- Only public rounds: company announcements, regulatory filings and reporting we can link to. Every round in the tracker links to its source.
- Amounts are shown as announced. Rounds in other currencies are converted to approximate US dollars for the totals only.
- We never estimate an amount or report a round we cannot source. Tips are checked against a public source before anything is published.
The four verdicts
- Shipping Paying customers and units working in the field. Needs: A named paying customer, a commercial deployment or sales we can link to. For medical robots, regulatory clearance and clinical use.
- Piloting Deployed with named partners, not yet at scale. Needs: A named partner or customer running the robot outside the company’s own lab, or a clinical trial.
- Demo Works on a stage or in a video. Not in the wild. Needs: Working hardware shown in public, on stage or on video, but no named deployment yet.
- Render Slides and CGI. A valuation in search of a machine. Needs: No working hardware shown in public: slides, CGI or renders only. We only give it when the evidence is clear, and we ask the company first.
A verdict judges how far the technology has got in the field today. It is not a rating of the company as an investment, and nothing on Robot Fund is investment advice.
How verdicts change
- Each verdict shows the evidence behind it: a one-line reason in the tracker and, where it is not in the funding source, a separate evidence link.
- We review a company’s verdict when it raises again, announces a deployment, or sends us evidence. Every change is logged below with the date.
- Before we give a company a Render verdict we ask it for evidence of working hardware, and we publish its answer.
Independence
Companies do not pay to be covered and cannot buy, review or change a verdict. Sponsors are always labelled, and when a sponsor is also a company we cover, the episode or issue says so.
AI
The on-air voice is AI-generated, and AI tools help us find and organize rounds. A person checks every source and makes every verdict call.
Corrections
Spotted a mistake? Tell us (choose Legal). We fix errors quickly and log every change here; entries are never deleted.