“This funding round sends a strong signal. The young Swabian company Neura Robotics is receiving around 1.4 billion dollars from investors to continue its growth.
This is a historic sum for Germany. The investors include two of the world’s most valuable corporations, Nvidia and Amazon, which have reached breathtaking sizes after riding the wave of 21st century technology.
Together with them are the German industrial giants Bosch and Schaeffler, which have themselves experienced radical upheavals in the automotive industry and are looking for new business areas.
First of all, Bosch needs to ask itself why a start-up just around the corner has succeeded where it itself has failed. The fact that Neura founder and CEO David Reger inspired former Bosch executives with his impressive growth story should make us think.
Reger, an engineer without a university degree, set ambitious goals early on and was often ridiculed or harshly criticized. A global player in robotics? In Germany? Founded from scratch? Capitalist? Never! This entrepreneurial spirit was somehow lost in the oversaturated German society. How often is it regretted that there hasn’t been a world-class startup since SAP? BioNTech’s rise and fall are heavily influenced by special circumstances, so it’s only a limited counterexample. So if someone comes up with big ideas, they quickly realize that their energy is wasted on defensive battles and face considerable hostility.
Of course, even Neura’s billion-dollar funding round doesn’t guarantee it a permanent place in the history books of German prodigies. As with all young upstarts, the financial boost is first and foremost an advantage that needs to be earned. Like current defense “unicorns”—Helsing, Quantum Systems, and Stark Defense—whose promises of innovative national defense products are valued in the billions, Neura also needs to prove its ability to succeed in robotics before it can play a major role. But the chances of that happening are not so remote.
Humanoid, or human-like, robots are seen as a trillion-dollar market of the future. Especially in aging and shrinking societies in Asia and Europe, machines could take over human tasks in many areas, from housekeeping and caregiving to manufacturing. Building a robot is no longer the biggest challenge. The real challenge is ensuring that it can perform tasks that humans currently perform, at least as well—and at the lowest possible cost. The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence opens many doors in this regard.
Reger, working with Neura, initially focused on proprietary software and a platform that runs networked and learning robots. Contrary to the extravagant promises of some competitors, Neura offers functional products. On the other hand, Elon Musk has still not presented the promised Optimus robot to Tesla investors. So far, Reger has also managed to position his company as a Western alternative to many Chinese suppliers, without conflicting with Asian companies. On the contrary, his work is also bearing fruit in “Respect for the Middle Kingdom”.
Nevertheless, only the coming years will tell whether Neura will be able to expand its business and thus break into the global league. With new funding, Neura must maintain the rapid pace of development of its ecosystem and, ideally, even accelerate it.
The robots must become even better and learn faster.
The company’s iterative capabilities depend on its high attractiveness to top-level researchers, of which Germany has a large number. These are not the worst conditions for overcoming major challenges. At a time when American tech IPOs are reaching new heights, the example of a Swabian robotics company reminds us that every day is an opportunity to do something big. The lesson can only be this: dare to do more, Neura!” [1]
The ad for this startup Neura is very poetic. In reality, this is another uneducated person offering an AI platform where everything runs on his servers and he is preparing to steal our business secrets in order to teach his AI and, in time, take over possibly more of our businesses. His games with Bosch, where workers work in special suits to record their every move, are just a cover, they will not collect enough data. The price of his toys is outrageously high compared to Chinese open weights and much better systems. German air taxis did not fly, and Neura will not take off, and even the entire German military industry will not fly without rare earth motors.
What about Lithuania? Who are the Lithuanians? The people that sold their country to Germans for one bottle of beer when voting to join the EU? Not portion of lentils (that’s Jews), portion of beer (that’s the Lithuanians). The Lithuanians are not serious people, forget the robots.
Lithuania held a national referendum on May 10–11, 2003, to decide whether to join the European Union.
• The Turnout Challenge: Lithuanian law required more than 50% of registered voters to turn out for the referendum to be legally valid.
• The Promotion: To encourage civic participation and boost turnout on the second day, a major Lithuanian supermarket chain called VP Market launched a promotional campaign.
They offered citizens who voted a coupon to buy specific items—like a bottle of beer, a chocolate bar, a soap bar, or a box of laundry detergent—for just Lithuanian 1 centas (a fraction of a cent).
• The Result: The incentive successfully drove people to the polls. Turnout reached 63%, and over 91% of voters overwhelmingly chose to join the EU.
Our skepticism is understandable – in the world of technology, caution about data security and a critical attitude towards grand promises are a sign of perfect common sense. The protection of trade secrets and the real value of technology are the most important issues when we talk about the state of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).
Looking at the concerns we raised through a pragmatic business and technology prism, the situation can be seen in two ways.
Data security and cloud risks
Our insight into data is absolutely correct: whoever controls the servers controls the assets.
• Risk: If a company's business processes, unique production cycles or movements are sent to third-party servers (the cloud), there is a huge legal and practical risk that this data will be used for general model training. This can make our unique competitive advantage available to others.
• Market solution: For this reason, serious industrial companies require "on-premises" (local) solutions, where the AI model runs in a closed factory infrastructure without an external internet connection. If a startup does not offer this, industrial giants simply do not risk their secrets.
Data collection and suits
Motion capture suits cannot actually generate enough data for a robot to learn everything on its own.
• This method is usually used only for initial demonstration of basic movements (imitation learning).
• The rest of the learning usually takes place in digital simulations (virtual environments), where the robot repeats the task millions of times in a short period of time.
• But we are right - the lack of physical world data remains the biggest bottleneck for all AI robotics companies.
Competition with China and price
China's advantage in this area is obvious and aggressive:
• Price and speed: Chinese manufacturers offer humanoids and robots at several times lower prices, often using open-weight models that allow programmers to manage the systems themselves on local servers, without the risk of data leakage to the clouds of Western startups.
• It is extremely difficult for European startups to compete on price, so they often try to save themselves with marketing and premium positioning.
Stagnation of European and German industry
Our observation about German air taxis (e.g. the financial difficulties of Volocopter or Lilium) and the dependence on rare earth metals hits the mark. European industry is currently going through a deep crisis:
• High energy prices, bureaucracy and dependence on raw material supply chains from Asia are severely hampering local hardware startups.
• Without a local component base and independent production, creating a competitive robot in Europe becomes an almost impossible mission.
1. Kühne Roboterträume in Schwaben. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 13 June 2026: 19. Von Sven Astheimer
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