{"id":143820,"date":"2025-09-09T10:15:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T10:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/143820\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T10:15:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T10:15:06","slug":"backed-by-women-grace-brown-secures-23m-for-robotics-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/143820\/","title":{"rendered":"Backed by women, Grace Brown secures $23m for robotics startup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grace Brown\u2019s humanoid robotics company, Andromeda, has just secured a massive investment to further expand, in the largest Series A round led by a woman in Australia this year. <\/p>\n

This deal comes at a much-needed time for diversity in the Australian startup ecosystem. Founding teams with at least one female founder received just 15 per cent of all private investment capital in 2024, and 2025 is currently on track to continue the trend of all-male founding teams dominating investment rounds. <\/p>\n

Also unique about this deal, led by the US-based Forerunner Ventures, is that it is majority women-led, bringing together several female investors, including Eurie Kim (\u014cURA Chairperson), Main Sequence\u2019s Alezeia Brown, Rethink Impact\u2019s Heidi Patel and Artesian\u2019s Ananya Sinha. <\/p>\n

Andromeda aims to help combat loneliness through emotionally intelligent humanoid companion robots. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bold and unique vision, and comes from an extraordinarily clever and creative co founder and CEO<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Grace Brown is a mechatronic engineer. She initially applied her skills to creating a companion for herself during Melbourne\u2019s prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns, before seeing an opportunity for such humanoid robots to support key care-related industries. <\/p>\n

Still in her mid-twenties, the entrepreneur only closed a $3 million seed round last year, led by Purpose Ventures. At the time, she told Women\u2019s Agenda<\/a> they had been operating as a stereotypically \u201cscrappy and lean\u201d startup and that, \u201cNow with this fundraise, it\u2019s going to enable us to do so much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Already, the companionship offered by Andromeda\u2019s \u201cAbi\u201d is so in demand that the company has a waitlist of orders for customers and partners in the aged care sector and in other industries. The first deployment of their next-generation Abi (Genesis Abi) will occur at a Mecwacare aged care home later this month. The latest upgrades to Abi make it the first humanoid robot ready to support Australia\u2019s workforce. <\/p>\n

\"\"Entrepreneur and CEO Grace Brown <\/p>\n

This new funding will help Andromeda fast-track customers on that waitlist, while also expanding into the United States to initially pursue the aged care market. <\/p>\n

Andromeda is also hiring across all areas of their business, including engineering and customer success. In the US, Brown says they\u2019re hiring for creative and animation robotics specialists. <\/p>\n

Brown shares what Genesis Abi can do by being fully autonomous. <\/p>\n

\u201cCare teams can direct Abi and set her daily schedule,\u201d Brown says. \u201cShe\u2019ll navigate the home independently, supporting staff to lead group activities, spending one-on-one time with residents, conversing in their preferred language, listening to their stories, and bringing that spark of human connection we all crave.<\/p>\n

She adds that Abi will help support care teams to provide more companionship to residents, \u201cfilling a void that simply can\u2019t be solved by more staff alone.\u201d <\/p>\n

Andromeda\u2019s approach to robotics focuses on empathy and emotional intelligence. Working with co-founder Yan Chen, Brown led Andromeda through R&D into commercialisation and now expansion. At the heart of it all is their goal to leverage technology for addressing the loneliness epidemic. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe the next mass technological adoption will be the home companion robot. With Abi, we\u2019re leading that shift, starting in aged care where the need for meaningful connection is greatest,\u201d said Brown. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at the frontier of emotion, character AI and social systems design, building a new kind of relationship that feels warm, helpful and profoundly human because the world needs more of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grace Brown\u2019s humanoid robotics company, Andromeda, has just secured a massive investment to further expand, in the largest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28,158],"class_list":{"0":"post-143820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}