Robot startup Tutor Intelligence raises $75 million, led by Menlo Park’s Andreessen Horowitz
Its warehouse robots go to work before they are fully self-driving, with remote human “tutors” helping and teaching the AI.
Tutor Intelligence, a Watertown, Massachusetts, company that makes AI-powered warehouse and factory robots, has raised $75 million. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, the Menlo Park venture capital firm also known as a16z, with Union Square Ventures and Neo joining, CEO Josh Gruenstein said on X on Nov. 2.
Tutor makes two robots, a16z says in a post explaining its investment. Cassie has one arm and moves boxes on and off pallets. Sonny has two arms and picks individual items, as in online-order warehouses. Both run on the same AI model.
Here is how it works. Most robot startups try to build a fully self-running AI “brain” before selling robots, which takes years of data. Tutor sends robots to work right away. When a robot gets stuck, a remote human operator, which the company calls a tutor, steers it. Each of those sessions becomes training data, so the AI should need less help over time.
Customers pay by the hour with no upfront cost, which a16z says makes robots affordable for smaller manufacturers. It says the company aims to have more than 1,000 robots under contract by the end of 2027. Tutor was founded out of MIT’s computer science and AI lab.
Source: Josh Gruenstein, CEO of Tutor Intelligence, post on X, Nov. 2, 2026; Andreessen Horowitz, “Investing in Tutor Intelligence,” Nov. 2, 2026; Tutor Intelligence, About