Why we invested in Cota Robotics

Robots that can handle our messy and unstructured physical world are no longer only part of science fiction. Chinese and US manufacturers are pouring billions into increasingly capable general-purpose machines of every form factor: from mobile manipulators, wheeled arms to semi- and full humanoids as hardware prices are falling fast. But as robots approach commercial viability, the real bottleneck to large-scale deployment is shifting. It is no longer about building robots; it is about operating them reliably, in unpredictable real-world environments, at economics that actually work.

We believe the biggest winners of the physical AI era may not be the companies manufacturing robots, but the ones building the operational layer that allows thousands of them to perform economically valuable work. That is exactly what Cota Robotics is building and it's why we're proud to lead their €1.92M pre-seed round.

Starting where the pain is sharpest: overnight retail

Retail is one of the world's largest labour markets, and one of its most constrained. Every grocery and convenience store needs shelves restocked daily, typically through early morning or late evening shifts of two to ten people. These are the shifts nobody wants: irregular hours, physically repetitive work, and premium pay that weighs heavily on an industry running on ~3% operating margins. 

Cota staffs these shifts with robots where they own and operate fleets of robots that replenish shelves, starting with the night shift. The result is a Robotics-as-a-Service model: instead of selling hardware, Cota sells completed work as a recurring, hourly service, while remaining deliberately hardware-agnostic. As robots become cheaper and more capable, Cota simply adopts whichever machines win. Its moat lives in deployment speed, retail integrations, infrastructure, fleet logistics and the data flywheel that large-scale operations create.

Why now

Three trends are converging at once. Robots have reached commercial viability, becoming dramatically cheaper and more reliable than even two years ago. Physical AI is improving exponentially, with vision-language-action models rapidly expanding what robots can do without a human in the loop. And retail economics increasingly demand automation, driven by labour shortages, wage inflation and structurally thin margins.

We believe the window to build the default operating platform in this category is unusually narrow. The infrastructure companies establishing customer relationships and operational density today are the ones best positioned as robotics as an industry mature. Cota is already moving: paid pilots with the first retail customers have already started.

Why Teo and Kildo

At pre-seed, we invest first and foremost in people, and this team is why we moved with conviction.

Teo Rizvanovic (CEO) previously co-founded Aerit, a Swedish drone delivery company, where he led both technical and commercial execution. He experienced first-hand what happens when an operations-heavy robotics company scales before the technology is ready. This lesson has made him extremely pragmatic about sequencing technology, unit economics and customer deployment. Teo is a hustler in the best sense of the word: relentlessly fast-paced, driven by an urgency you feel within minutes of meeting him, and someone who simply will not take no for an answer.

Kildo Alias (CTO) co-founded Aerit alongside Teo, so the two have already built a robotics company together once before. He is an exceptionally strong systems engineer who combines deep technical capability with commercial judgement. As an engineering leader at Estrid, he built the company's entire data infrastructure from scratch, and is unshakeably calm under pressure, the steady counterweight to Teo's intensity.

Together, they are complementary in the best way: Teo's relentless commercial urgency paired with Kildo's calm, systematic engineering depth. They have outlier levels of obsession, integrity and ship factor. 

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"The robotics race is usually framed as a hardware race. We think the more interesting question is who operates these robots at scale once the hardware commoditizes. Teo and Kildo are building that layer with a speed and pragmatism we rarely see." –  Magnus Hambleton, byFounders

"Retailers don't want robots — they want shelves stocked every morning at a lower cost. We deliver that outcome from day one, and every shift our robots work makes the whole fleet smarter." –  Teo Rizvanovic, co-founder & CEO, Cota Robotics

The road ahead

Cota’s long-term vision extends far beyond retail shelves. The same operational layer: teleoperation infrastructure, fleet logistics, and AI trained on real-world data applies to logistics, warehousing, hospitality and ultimately general physical labour automation. Manual labour worth roughly $1 trillion in wages sits within reach of this model.

Plenty of risks remain: physical AI needs to keep improving, unit economics need to be positive, and large platform players may eventually move downstream. But operating thousands of robots inside customer environments is as much a logistics business as a robotics business, and businesses like that are won by teams who out-execute, out-ship and out-care everyone else. That is precisely who Teo and Kildo are.

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We are glad to be joined in this round by reThink Ventures, Icebreaker VC and a group of strategic angels. 

Welcome to the byFounders family, Teo and Kildo. 🤖

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