Stateful Robotics secures £3.6m pre-seed to give robots persistent operational memory
This article covers Stateful Robotics, a robotics startup, which has closed a £3.6m pre-seed funding round to accelerate deployments of software that gives robots persistent operational memory. The funding is intended to support pilots and industrial roll-outs in logistics, infrastructure and healthcare by expanding the engineering team, enhancing the platform and scaling go-to-market efforts.
Stateful Robotics, a robotics startup developing software that gives robots persistent operational memory, has closed a £3.6m pre-seed funding round to accelerate deployments that help robots operate reliably in changing, real-world environments.
Why it matters
Robotics deployments in factories, hospitals and infrastructure sites promise productivity gains but routinely stumble when conditions change — a blocked aisle, a surprise delivery, poor lighting or a safety incident can break tightly scripted robot workflows. The funding signals investor interest in software layers that add memory and planning across hours and days, not just seconds, making routine deployments more robust and easier to scale.
Inside the product
Stateful Robotics’ platform creates a persistent, shared model of tasks, environments and past behaviour. Rather than treating each decision in isolation, the system continuously integrates robots’ sensor data, task progress and historic performance into a dynamic model. That model lets single robots, robot fleets and human-robot teams recall prior events, plan around disruption and complete missions with less human supervision.
The team says the approach addresses a specific gap left by recent advances in perception and foundation models: those models can interpret scenes or follow prompts but do not retain operational memory. Stateful’s software is aimed at industrial settings such as logistics and infrastructure, where the company already has pilot customers. The new funds will be used to grow the engineering team, enhance its performance engine and expand go-to-market efforts with industrial partners.
Who are the investors?
The round is a £3.6m pre-seed. Lead investors are Amadeus Capital Partners and Oxford Science Enterprises. Stan Boland — identified in the announcement as the founder of Five — has provided angel investment and will join as an advisor.
In the announcement, Manjari Chandran-Ramesh, Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners, said:
We’re at a point where robotics hardware has largely matured, yet the industry remains stalled by a critical bottleneck: the inability of machines to handle planning over longer time horizons. Stateful’s platform is the missing layer required to turn today’s promising deployments into robust, scalable realworld solutions. They are uniquely placed to bridge the gap between world-class robotics research and the complex, high-stakes surroundings of global industry.
In the announcement, Sam Harman, Partner at Oxford Science Enterprises, said:
We’re at a point where robotics hardware has largely matured, yet the industry remains stalled by a critical bottleneck: the inability of machines to handle planning over longer time horizons. Stateful’s platform is the missing layer required to turn today’s promising deployments into robust, scalable realworld solutions. They are uniquely placed to bridge the gap between world-class robotics research and the complex, high-stakes surroundings of global industry.
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Founder perspective
Stateful Robotics was co-founded by CEO Kirsty Lloyd-Jukes alongside Professor Nick Hawes, Professor David Parker and Dr Bruno Lacerda. Lloyd-Jukes previously led Latent Logic, an Oxford spinout acquired by Alphabet’s Waymo in 2019. The team’s work at Oxford on autonomy, probabilistic verification and decision-making under uncertainty underpins the product.
In the announcement, Kirsty Lloyd-Jukes, Co-founder & CEO at Stateful Robotics, said:
Robotics has moved from static arms, to mobile units in tightly controlled environments, and now into hybrid-human spaces like factories, hospitals and energy infrastructure. This progression demands a form of intelligence that can reason about changing context over time - not just react to a single camera frame or prompt. Stateful Robotics is tackling that challenge with a novel form of AI that can support mixed forms of robots that are genuinely useful in the industrial settings where mass commercial adoption is likely to happen first.
In the announcement, Nick Hawes, Co-founder & Chief Scientist at Stateful Robotics, said:
Mobile robots promise significant productivity gains, but scaling them requires constant reliability and clear, measurable outcomes in the real world. Most robots excel at "what now," but fail at "what next," especially when "next" is defined over hours and days, not just minutes. By maintaining a live model of each deployment based on patterns over time, our platform ensures that robots – be they single robot, robot fleets or human-robot teams – perform reliably and consistently.
The bigger picture
The round highlights a familiar pattern in UK robotics: hardware progress is outpacing the software needed to operate reliably at scale. Startups that combine academic research with pragmatic industrial deployments — particularly those rooted in UK universities such as Oxford — continue to attract early capital. If Stateful Robotics can translate pilots in logistics and infrastructure into repeatable commercial contracts, the company could join a small group proving that persistent operational memory is a commercially valuable layer for robot deployments across Europe.
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