Oxford spinout Stateful Robotics has raised $4.8 million in pre-seed funding to solve one of the most persistent challenges in robotics: enabling machines to operate reliably for extended periods of time in unpredictable real-world environments.
The round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Oxford Science Enterprises, with additional support from serial entrepreneur Stan Boland, founder of autonomous vehicle company Five.
The funding will be used to accelerate deployment of the Stateful platform, which introduces a new level of “long-horizon intelligence” – enabling robots to remember past events, adapt to changing conditions, and plan tasks over hours or days rather than moments.
While recent advances in large language models and basic AI systems have greatly improved robots’ ability to perceive and interpret their environment, most systems still struggle when the environment changes.
Unexpected obstacles, changing lighting conditions, or operational disruptions can quickly derail robotic systems that lack the ability to learn from past experiences.
Stateful Robotics aims to eliminate this limitation by creating a persistent, evolving model for each deployment environment. By continuously integrating data on tasks, performance and historical results, the platform enables robots to anticipate challenges and adapt in real time.
Professor Nick Hawes, co-founder and chief scientist, said traditional systems treat each decision in isolation.
“Stateless systems cannot remember previous incidents or how work actually occurs at a site,” he said. “Our platform creates a common model of tasks and environments that allows robots to adapt to disruptions and safely complete missions without constant supervision.”
The company was founded by managing director Kirsty Lloyd-Jukes, previously CEO of Latent Logic, an Oxford spinout acquired by Waymo, along with leading academic researchers including Professor Nick Hawes, Professor David Parker and Dr. Bruno Lacerda co-founded.
Her work builds on more than a decade of research at the University of Oxford in areas such as autonomy, decision making under uncertainty and probabilistic verification.
Lloyd-Jukes said the biggest challenge for robotics is not immediate decision-making, but longer-term planning.
“Most robots are good at ‘what now’ but fail at ‘what next’, especially when the ‘next’ spans hours or days,” she said. “By maintaining a live model of every deployment, we ensure robots perform reliably and consistently in complex environments.”
Investors believe the technology could help drive large-scale commercial adoption of robotics in sectors such as logistics, infrastructure, energy and healthcare.
Dr. Manjari Chandran-Ramesh of Amadeus Capital said the evolution of robotics, from static industrial weapons to mobile systems operating in human environments, requires a new form of intelligence capable of reasoning about time and context.
Similarly, Oxford Science Enterprises has highlighted what it believes is a critical bottleneck in the industry: the inability of current systems to handle long-term planning and operational complexity.
Stateful Robotics is already working with pilot customers in sectors such as logistics and infrastructure, where reliability and safety are critical to scaling automation.
The new funding will support the expansion of its engineering team, further development of its performance engine and broader commercial rollout with industry partners.
The spin-off also reflects the continued strength of the UK deep tech ecosystem, with Oxford University Innovation playing a key role in supporting the company’s founding and early development.
As robotics hardware becomes more sophisticated, attention is shifting to the software and intelligence levels required to make systems truly autonomous.
Stateful Robotics believes that solving the “memory and scheduling problem” will be key to transforming promising prototypes into reliable, large-scale solutions, unlocking the next phase of the automation revolution.
