Minerva Humanoids Raises $10M to Build Robotic Workmates for Dangerous Jobs

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 06, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- Minerva Humanoids, a robotics company building humanoid robots for the world’s most dangerous jobs in onshore and offshore oil and gas operations and public safety, has announced it has raised approximately $10 million in pre-seed funding. The round, led by General Catalyst, with Long Journey Ventures and Credo Ventures as co-leads, and participation from MVP Ventures, Kaya, RunwayVC, Compound, Founders Embassy, Hugging Face, Codecademy, YG, Walter Ventures, Tiny Ventures, Chaotica, and Babylon, brings Minerva out of stealth as it launches its first paid pilots in the fall.

Founded by CEO Sandor Felber and CTO Maurice Rahme, Minerva designed Roger, its purpose-built semi-autonomous humanoid robot, around the judgment, skill, and dexterity of the highly trained specialists who already perform these jobs. Roger allows those specialists to apply their expertise while keeping their physical bodies away from the danger, whether that’s responding to a suspected explosive at an airport or performing hazardous work at an energy site.

People are dying every day doing jobs the rest of the world takes for granted, said Felber. We didn't set out to replace the people doing them. We set out to build a robot that lets them do the job efficiently from the comfort of their office or home, without asking them to risk their lives for our safety or our energy.

Work on offshore rigs, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), and hazardous material response still puts people directly in harm’s way. Roughly every 75 minutes, an energy worker somewhere in the world tragically falls victim to their job, amounting to around 7,000 deaths a year.¹ The industry has spent decades reducing that risk, yet many tasks still ultimately require a person to enter the danger zone. Public safety teams face the same threat. NATO consistently cites EOD and hazardous material response teams at the highest risk segment of each unit, with technicians relying on decades-old wheeled, single-arm robots that lack the dexterity required for complex tasks.

“Every EOD operator knows the long walk,” said British Special Forces veteran and Head of Hazardous Operations at Minerva Humanoids, Dominic Asquith.

Minerva Intelligence, the company’s proprietary AI control system, manages the humanoid’s balance, fall recovery, and navigation while translating input from a skilled remote operator into action. The specialist operates Roger through a VR headset, allowing them to see through the humanoid’s eyes and perform fine manipulation while staying in command of every critical action. Low-latency control loops keep the response immediate, and operators learn full-body control in a matter of minutes.

The result is the specialist’s capabilities applied in the danger zone, but with one critical difference: the robot takes the physical risk instead of the person.

Minerva is Western sovereign with its software and AI primarily developed in the United States, while its first Roger prototypes are manufactured and assembled in Germany, enabling the company to rapidly iterate on the hardware. Minerva went from an idea to a fully functional walking humanoid in five months, including the bespoke design, manufacturing, and assembly of Roger, purpose-built to complete these critical tasks. The company plans to produce its humanoid robots in both Germany and the United States using a Western industrial base without reliance on single-source Chinese components.

Felber previously played a core role in launching MIT CSAIL's research line on humanoid robots using AI and spent six years at Boston Dynamics as one of the technical leads on the Stretch robot, taking it from an early prototype to a commercially deployed product.

“Robots can go where no man should,” said Lee Jacobs, partner at Long Journey Ventures.

Ahead of its official launch, Minerva completed a showcase and keynote at the NATO Explosive Ordnance Disposal Centre of Excellence in Samorin, Slovakia. The company also established research partnerships with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) to advance humanoid capabilities for the energy sector and the University of Waterloo to advance humanoid perception in smoke, darkness, sensor failure, and other vision-denied environments. Minerva is also exploring deployments at two of the world’s 10 busiest airports, including completed on-site testing focused on high-risk public safety applications. With this funding, Minerva is further advancing its purpose-built hardware and AI capabilities for energy and EOD applications to support deployments later this year.