Persona AI

• Persona

• Operating use

  2026-09-22 - Persona AI disclosed autonomous full-body humanoid welding at unnamed customer sites over the prior few weeks. - Persona full-body humanoid / autonomous welding - Undisclosed customer sites

  Source

• 2025-05-14 - Pre-seed - $27M - Persona AI closes $27M pre-seed round

  Persona AI closed an oversubscribed pre-seed financing to develop industrial humanoids for shipbuilding and manufacturing. - source: prnewswire.com

• Cofounder Ventures - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• dConstruct Technologies - Participant - Angel / Individual - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Embedded Ventures - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Fathom Fund - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Goose Capital - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Invicta Growth - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• K2 Global - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• K50 Ventures - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Kalea Ventures - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Mirae Asset Group - Participant - Unknown - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Olive Hill Ventures - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• SGA Capital - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• SGH - Participant - Unknown - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Sound Media Ventures - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Tides Ventures - Lead - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Tola Capital - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Unity Growth - Lead - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Wave Function Ventures - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14
• Zero Infinity Partners - Participant - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2025-05-14

• Nicolaus Radford - Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Events

• 2026-09-22 - Deployment - Persona AI begins autonomous humanoid welding at customer sites

  The current work moves beyond Persona AI's earlier teleoperated welding demonstrations into autonomous welding by a complete robot system. The system learns site-specific welding methods from data including voltage, speed and torch movement patterns.

  Source
• 2026-05-11 - Partnership - Persona AI and Under Armour research protective robot materials

  Testing examines how textiles respond to heat, friction and repetitive movement. The teams are investigating external layers for thermal regulation, abrasion resistance and flexibility in demanding industrial environments.

  Source
• 2026-02-05 - Partnership - POSCO Investment supports Persona AI steelworks humanoid PoC

  POSCO Investment will support a proof of concept for the steelworks humanoid project. Persona AI will develop and implement a humanoid platform tailored to the steelworks environment. Testing targets steel-coil logistics, where the humanoid will help workers attach crane belts to coils.

  Source
• 2025-12-31 - Product Launch - Persona AI shows first look at Gen1 humanoid

  The Houston company also had an office in Pensacola, Florida. Its shipyard-welding development agreement involved subsidiaries of HD Hyundai.

  Source
• 2025-11-13 - Award - Persona AI Named Finalist for Startup of the Year at 2025 Houston Innovation Awards

  • Persona AI was named a finalist for Startup of the Year at the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards. • The awards ceremony took place on November 13, 2025, at Greentown Labs in Houston. • Persona AI was also a finalist in the Deep Tech Business category.

  Source
• 2025-10-07 - Award - Persona AI named Houston Innovation Awards finalist

  The Startup of the Year winner would be selected through public online voting; a judging panel chose winners in the other categories. The awards ceremony was scheduled for November 13 at Greentown Labs in Houston.

  Source
• 2025-05-14 - Funding - Persona AI closes $27M pre-seed round

  Unity Growth and Tides Ventures co-led the round; participants included Mirae Asset Group, Invicta Growth, Fathom Fund, Embedded Ventures and K2 Global. The company planned a robotics-as-a-service model to reduce customers’ upfront capital requirements.

  Source
• 2025-05-07 - Partnership - Persona AI joins HD Hyundai shipyard-welding development programme

  Prototype completion was targeted for the end of 2026, with field testing and commercial deployment planned from 2027. Persona would develop humanoid hardware and AI; Vazil would supply welding tools and a testing environment, while the Hyundai companies contributed field data, training data and validation.

  Source

Relationships

• POSCO Investment

  Poc Partner - POSCO Investment supports the proof of concept for Persona AI's steelworks humanoid deployment.

• Under Armour

  Performance Materials Research - Persona AI and Under Armour are researching performance textiles for thermal regulation, abrasion resistance and flexibility on industrial humanoids.

• ABS

  Humanoid Shipyard Inspection Development - Persona AI and ABS signed an MoU to develop humanoid shipyard inspection technologies and data standards for classification.

• HD Hyundai Robotics

  Shipyard Humanoid Welding Development - Persona AI and HD Hyundai Robotics are jointly developing humanoid welding robots for shipyards under a four-party MoU.

• Vazil Company

  Shipyard Welding Development - Persona AI and Vazil joined a four-party shipyard humanoid welding programme; Vazil would develop welding tools and an industrial testing environment.

Market context

Particle-1

Comparable profiles

• Foundation Robotics

  stack adjacency - Dexterous Manipulation

• DexForce

  stack adjacency - Dexterous Manipulation

• RobotEra

  stack adjacency - Dexterous Manipulation

• Apptronik

  stack adjacency - Dexterous Manipulation

• UBTECH Robotics

  stack adjacency - Dexterous Manipulation

• Figure AI

  stack adjacency - Dexterous Manipulation

• Zhejiang Humanoid

  stack adjacency - Dexterous Manipulation

• 1X Technologies

  stack adjacency - Dexterous Manipulation

Shared workflows

• Humanoid

  workflow adjacency - Industrial Task Execution

• Holiday Robotics

  workflow adjacency - Industrial Task Execution

• Agility Robotics

  workflow adjacency - Industrial Task Execution

• Unitree

  workflow adjacency - Industrial Task Execution

• Standard Bots

  workflow adjacency - Industrial Task Execution

• ISYBOT

  workflow adjacency - Industrial Task Execution

Context tags

• Shipyard industrial work - Customer Environment - Persona AI and HD Hyundai agreement targets shipyard welding and shipbuilding automation.
• Shipyard welding - Workflow - Persona AI and HD Hyundai agreement focuses on humanoid welding robots for shipbuilding automation.
• Humanoid industrial builder - Peer Group
• Robot OEM - Stack Layer - Persona AI develops humanoid robot platforms.
• Dexterous manipulation - Capability - Welding/fabrication humanoids require precise manipulation, but keep derived until product-level manipulation specs are attached.
• Industrial task execution - Workflow
• Pilot deployments - Commercial Stage - Public agreements and development program exist, but deployment maturity remains pre-scale.
• Factories - Customer Environment