YK-Robotics raises €1 million to make any robotic cell programmable with words

• The aim of the round is to drive the expansion in Spain of this AI-native, robot-brand-agnostic platform, which makes the cell understand people, rather than people having to understand the cell.
• Far from focusing on a niche, YK-Robotics already works in industries as diverse as food, chemicals, furniture and wood, and deploys cells in up to 80% less time.
• “Our goal is for robotic cells to be as intelligent and understandable as a highly specialised operator who is also an excellent communicator,” says Joan Ortega Alcaide, CEO of YK-Robotics.

Barcelona, 29 October 2026. YK-Robotics has closed a €1 million seed round co-led by Draper B1 and First Drop, with BStartup (Banco Sabadell), Coben Ventures, Elephant Capital and PnP USA (Plug and Play) also taking part. In addition to the funding, these investors bring the backing of Banco Sabadell, Plug and Play’s global network of corporates and access to business and industrial communities in the Valencian Community, Aragon and the Basque Country.

With the funds raised, YK-Robotics will accelerate the roll-out of its robotic cells in Spain and expand its network of partners. Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Aragon and the Basque Country will be the first regions to adopt the platform, with the support of its investors.

On the product side, the round will make the whole of YK-Platform usable exclusively in natural language, so that describing what is needed is enough to access the most advanced capabilities in robotics and automation. Its AI will also support the diagnosis and troubleshooting of each cell.

The company will also grow its team, mainly in Barcelona, to deliver projects faster and to a higher standard, and has already started recruiting for its first roles.

What YK-Robotics solves

YK-Robotics makes advanced robotics simple. It develops YK-Platform, the software that acts as the brain of the robotic cell, and on top of it delivers turnkey cells, also available as robotics-as-a-service, to manufacturers, system integrators and machine builders.

According to the latest Eurostat data, the job vacancy rate for manufacturing labourers in the EU stands at 7.3%, the second highest of all occupations. These jobs are largely made up of repetitive, physically demanding or hazardous tasks such as palletising, machine tending and picking, and automating them makes it possible to cover work that nobody is doing today and to improve conditions for those already working on the shop floor. The obstacle is well known: the robot is the easy part. The hard part is getting the camera, the gripper, the machine, the safety systems and the people on the line to work as a single system, and allowing all of it to change when a new product comes in. Today that takes months of specialised engineering and a different tool for each brand.

YK-Platform solves that coordination problem in a single environment governed by generative AI. Users ask in natural language for a task, an operator screen or a format change, and the platform generates it from the real context of the cell. It is the system itself that translates those words into the variety of industrial protocols and programming languages that make it happen. YK-Platform supports the cell from design and simulation through programming, commissioning, operation and maintenance, with remote supervision from YK-Portal. In doing so, it speeds up the work of those who already develop in robotics and allows many new users, and new developers too, to enter the field.

A key difference is that it does not depend on the hardware: the platform adapts to each customer’s robot and industry, whatever the manufacturer. Robot brands it integrates include KUKA, FANUC, ABB, Universal Robots, Comau, Kawasaki and Estun, and it also works with robots already installed, including those left idle by a product change. It is also compatible with a wide variety of vision systems and machines, and connects both to shop-floor devices (OT) and to management systems (IT).

YK-Platform’s AI draws on both proprietary and open methods to provide functions such as visual servoing and collision-free trajectory planning. These are what make it possible to automate less rigid processes: parts that do not always arrive in the same position, or products that vary in shape and size.

“At YK-Robotics, our challenge is to combine artificial intelligence with constantly evolving advanced algorithms, without compromising the reliability that industry demands. The user, who knows the process better than anyone, sets the course, and the AI uses our platform to develop the most suitable robotic solution. The final decision always rests with the user: the AI proposes, the user decides,” explains Marco Guadagni, CTO and co-founder of YK-Robotics.

How to work with YK-Robotics

YK-Robotics invites manufacturers to show it what they make. The first step is a 30-minute call with one of the company’s engineers. This is followed by a live walkthrough of the platform applied to their actual process, covering the cell design, its simulation and the operator interface with their own formats, free of charge and with no obligation.

For system integrators and machine builders, YK-Robotics offers a partner programme designed to accelerate the business of both sides: they can build the platform into their projects and their machines, and a software-only deployment is completed in one to two weeks.

Sales contact: info@yk-robotics.com · www.yk-robotics.com

The investors’ view

“Joan, Marco and their team have spent years on the factory floor, tackling processes that seemed impossible to automate. With YK-Robotics they have made robots understand people, not the other way around. That combination of technical depth and real knowledge of the industrial customer is what convinced us. We are very excited to support them in this new stage,” says Raquel Bernal, Managing Partner & Investment Director at Draper B1.

“Industrial robotics has enormous potential, but its adoption is still held back by the complexity and cost of integration. YK-Robotics is tackling precisely that barrier, combining artificial intelligence and industrial know-how to make automation simpler, more flexible and more accessible. At First Drop we see an opportunity to build technology that can scale internationally from Europe and have a real impact on the competitiveness of industry,” says Manu Nieto, General Partner at First Drop.

Designed with its users, proven on the factory floor

When YK-Robotics started out, no-code was expected to be the simplification robotics needed. The company first validated the need and designed the platform with the user at the centre, working with more than 30 non-expert users from very different sectors. No-code was not enough: a couple of years ago, YK-Robotics pivoted to natural language as the way to interact with machines, and the experience improved radically. The platform was ready: its more than 100 high-level methods, written to be understood by a person, were just as readable to a language model, which simply became another user.

In Italy, the company took the platform from the lab to real industrial projects to prove its value in production. Today it works in sectors as varied as food, chemicals, furniture, electrical components, sheet-metal machinery, nonwovens and wood, and in processes ranging from end-of-line and bin picking to machine tending, precision assembly, dispensing and quality control. Classic challenges such as chaotic or mixed palletising, with parts and boxes of varying formats, are solved in a short time.

In those projects, YK-Robotics has found that it can deploy a cell in up to 80% less time, with around 20% higher output. The latest versions significantly improve on these figures and add risk mitigation and checks against the applicable directives: cells that are faster to commission and more productive, but also more resilient and with higher-quality processes.

“Thanks to YK-Robotics, our operators and our customers can autonomously generate new, safe production programs, ensuring collision-free execution. That gives the flexibility the market demands and greatly reduces operational risk,” says Elia Zinetti, CEO of Schiavi Macchine International, an Italian manufacturer of sheet-metal processing machinery.

“Our goal is for robotic cells, with the best manipulation and perception capabilities of today’s hardware, to be as intelligent and understandable as a highly specialised operator who is also an excellent communicator. That is possible by combining the general knowledge of the latest AI models with specific knowledge of the physical world and deterministic validators, in a platform that knows how to talk to every component of the cell,” says Joan Ortega Alcaide, CEO and co-founder of YK-Robotics.

About YK-Robotics

YK-Robotics was born in Florence in 2020. It was founded by Joan Ortega Alcaide, PhD, an engineer and mathematician from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) with an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder, who had been researching surgical robotics in the United States, and Marco Guadagni, a robotics engineer who had been technical director of an advanced robotics company serving the Italian automotive industry. Both kept running into the same paradox: automating a process that an operator can explain in five minutes took months of work by several robotics experts. Hence the name, You Know Robotics. The group’s parent company is Spain-based YK Robotics, S.L., which owns 100% of its Italian subsidiary, YK-Robotics Srl.

About the investors

Draper B1. Draper B1 is a venture capital firm based in Valencia with an international presence, specialising in early-stage technology startups. It is part of the Draper Venture Network, the global alliance led by Tim Draper that brings together more than 20 funds present in the world’s main technology hubs. Its purpose is to support entrepreneurs and give them the tools and connections they need to scale and globalise their companies. Being part of the Draper ecosystem allows it to offer direct access to an international network focused on the United States, which eases expansion and accelerates the growth of its portfolio companies.

It has managed three funds with more than 100 startups in its portfolio and a track record of exits that shows its ability to create value, realise it and return it to its investors. Its most notable deals include the early exit from Signaturit, with a highly significant multiple and IRR, together with a multiple of close to 40x on its investment in Jeff and 9x on Traventia. Alongside these, around ten further deals have returned between three and five times the capital invested, demonstrating consistency in both execution and company selection.

First Drop. An impact venture capital fund investing in pre-seed and seed technology startups that tackle the biggest social and environmental challenges, combining positive impact with financial returns. With its operational base in Valencia and a fund size of over €19 million, it counts the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT) among its investors and plans to invest in 45 startups in sectors such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, health and sustainability. In addition to funding, it offers strategic support and an acceleration programme focused on measuring and scaling the impact of its portfolio companies.

BStartup (Banco Sabadell). Banco Sabadell’s unit dedicated to startups and scaleups, a pioneer in Spanish banking. It combines specialised banking services with equity investment: since 2014 it has invested in more than 100 technology and science startups, with a focus on software, artificial intelligence and deep tech, giving them access to the business-client network of an IBEX 35 bank.

Coben Ventures. The investment vehicle of Coben Group (Bilbao), focused on early-stage technology startups. With a portfolio of more than 40 companies, it stands out for the entrepreneurial DNA of its founders, experts in scaling digital businesses and expanding them internationally. Coben Ventures combines strategic investment with close support to guide founders on their path to growth.

Elephant Capital. A private investment vehicle based in Zaragoza, made up of entrepreneurs who have built and sold companies, active business owners and experienced investors. It invests in pre-seed and seed startups in Spain and brings, in addition to capital, knowledge of the industrial sector and a network of contacts built up over years. Industry, logistics and applied AI are among its preferred sectors.

PnP USA (Plug and Play). Plug and Play is a global innovation platform founded in Silicon Valley in 2006 that connects corporations, startups, investors, universities and public administrations. It runs acceleration programmes, corporate–startup pilots and early-stage investment across more than 20 industries, including advanced manufacturing, AI and supply chain, and in more than 60 locations, including Barcelona, Madrid, Milan and Turin. It has invested in more than 2,500 companies, including PayPal, Dropbox and N26. Its investment in YK-Robotics is made through PnP USA.

Press contact

Joan Ortega Alcaide, CEO · joan.ortega.alcaide@yk-robotics.com · +34 610 902 248