Bain Capital’s Ajay Agarwal bet on robots when Silicon Valley wouldn’t. Now he sees a ‘golden era’ for physical AI
That’s the kind of bet Bain Capital Ventures’ Ajay Agarwal made more than two decades ago, backing a robotics startup that Silicon Valley investors had largely turned away.
Key points
- “I didn’t know anything about robotics or hardware, but he explained the problem in a way that you could explain it to your grandmother.” Convincing Bain’s partners to invest, however, would take more work.
- Part of that comes down to scale: Smartphone and electric vehicle makers buy up cameras, sensors, and batteries in massive quantities, helping drive down the cost of parts that robots use as well.
- It’s finding a bet the rest of Silicon Valley hasn’t already crowded into.
“They can adapt and adjust to the edge cases which inevitably happen in a physical environment.” Twenty-two years ago, Agarwal had to convince his partners to take robots seriously.
Through Bain’s network, Agarwal connected Kiva’s team with Don Ralph, who ran North American e-commerce fulfillment for Staples, for additional due diligence.
Additional details
- When Agarwal met Kiva cofounder Mick Mountz in 2004, the company had no revenue, no finished product, and no customers.
- Robotics and physical AI startups raised $27.6 billion in funding across 1,009 deals in 2025, more than double the previous year’s total, according to PitchBook figures.
- “Their initial reaction, which I don’t blame them for, was ‘We don’t know anything about robots,’” Agarwal said.
- Now, Agarwal sees an even bigger, wider opportunity.
- Physical Intelligence, another leading robotics startup, was started by Berkeley roboticist Sergey Levine and ex-Google DeepMind researcher Karol Hausman.
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