YZi Labs Backs RoboForce With $52M to Close the Industrial Labor Gap Through Physical AI

TLDR:

• YZi Labs led a $52M funding round in RoboForce, with Ella Zhang joining the company’s board as director.
• RoboForce’s TITAN robot delivers 1mm precision for harsh industrial jobs in solar, mining, and logistics.
• NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang spotlighted TITAN at GTC 2025, validating RoboForce’s Physical AI field work.
• RoboForce holds letters of intent for 11,000+ robots and is now scaling toward full production rollout.

YZi Labs has led a $52 million funding round in RoboForce, a Silicon Valley-based robotics company. The firm builds Physical AI-powered robotic labor systems for demanding industrial settings.

RoboForce’s flagship TITAN robot targets critical workforce shortages in solar, mining, logistics, and data centers. Ella Zhang, Managing Partner and Head of YZi Labs, joined the company’s board following the raise. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang also spotlighted the company at GTC 2025.

RoboForce Builds TITAN to Address Growing Industrial Workforce Shortages

RoboForce was founded in 2023 to tackle what co-founder Leo Ma calls the gap between industrial growth and human availability.

In 2024, approximately 53 gigawatts of U.S. solar projects were delayed due to labor shortages. That number alone reflects how deep the workforce problem runs across key industries.

Ma spent years visiting hundreds of factories, from chip fabrication plants to underground drilling sites. Each visit reinforced the same conclusion.

As Ma put it, “These are the jobs that we shouldn’t need people to do anymore.” That conviction directly shaped what RoboForce set out to build.

The TITAN robot is designed for environments too harsh for sustained human labor. It operates with millimeter-level accuracy and the endurance needed for high-output industrial workflows.

The team behind it comes from Carnegie Mellon, Amazon Robotics, Google, Waymo, Tesla Robotics, and Apple.

RoboForce runs on a Physical AI data flywheel. Every deployed robot generates field data that feeds back into the company’s foundation model.

Ma stated, “The more you use it, the smarter it gets, and spinning that data flywheel requires patient, generational capital.” That compounding loop improves the entire fleet over time.

Ma further noted that YZi Labs was a deliberate choice as a partner. “We deliberately chose YZi Labs as a partner who understands infrastructure timelines and is willing to bet on a long-term business,” he said.

YZi Labs confirmed its position publicly via the following post:

NVIDIA Partnership and $52M Capital Set the Stage for Production-Scale Growth

RoboForce operates in close collaboration with NVIDIA across its full technology stack. The company uses NVIDIA Jetson Thor at the edge for real-time processing.

Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab handle simulation and robot learning, while NVIDIA Cosmos generates synthetic training data.

Jensen Huang featured TITAN at GTC Washington, D.C. in October 2025. He stated, “AI is transforming the world’s factories into intelligent thinking machines — the engines of a new industrial revolution.” That recognition followed real field validation already underway by the time of the keynote.

YZi Labs’ Jing Xiong described the team’s reaction after seeing the first demo. “When we met the team and saw the demo, it clicked,” Xiong said. “These robots are doing the work humans were never meant to endure.” RoboForce has since received letters of intent covering demand for over 11,000 robots.

The $52 million will fund foundation model advancement, manufacturing expansion, and commercialization efforts. Ella Zhang, who joined the board after the round closed, described the broader vision.

“This is beyond a financial investment; it’s a partnership built on the shared belief that the next frontier of AI will be defined by its impact on the physical plane,” she said. YZi Labs sees this round as the start of a broader commitment to Physical AI.

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