Ultra raises $62M and deepens ties with robot-brain startup Physical Intelligence

Ultra, a Brooklyn robotics startup that rents robots to warehouses the way you might rent a forklift, has raised $62 million. It also expanded its partnership with Physical Intelligence, the AI company building software that serves as a robot’s brain. The $62 million came in two parts. The bigger piece is a $50 million Series A led by Framework Ventures, with Y Combinator also participating. The rest is an earlier $12 million seed round. Y Combinator and Next View led that one. Ultra was founded in 2024, which makes this a fast climb. Going from founding to a $50 million Series A in about two years is quick even by startup standards. The company builds dual-arm stationary robots called Operator, or OP1. They handle packing, sorting, and kitting tasks inside e-commerce warehouses. Kitting, for the uninitiated, means bundling several items into a single package. Think of a subscription box that needs a shampoo, a conditioner, and a sample serum dropped in together. Ultra says its robots have packed over 500,000 orders at sites across the US. One notable deployment sits at Highline Commerce in Brooklyn, where the robots handle up to 30% of the company’s fulfillment volume. Setup is al...