Enigma raises $70M to make controlling a robot as easy as adjusting the volume

6:00 AM PDT · July 27, 2026

Enigma, a research lab set to emerge from stealth on Monday, is taking a fundamentally different approach to robotics AI. Rather than focusing purely on model capabilities, the less-than-one-year-old startup wants to study how humans engage with robots in hopes that these interactions will lead to intuitive interfaces and possibly a different kind of robotic brain.

To finance its mission, Enigma raised a $70 million seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Sarah Guo of Conviction Partners.

To test how humans want to communicate with machines, Enigma is launching a large-scale experiment that allows anyone in the world to interact online with more than 100 of its proprietary AI robots. These robots, housed in hangars located in Israel and California, can perform tasks such as drawing pictures with a paintbrush, fighting each other with swords, and performing simple chemistry experiments by picking up and mixing flasks with liquids. Enigma claims to have developed both the robotic arms and their underlying models entirely from the ground up.

Jonathan Jacobi — Microsoft’s youngest-ever employee, recruited by Wiz founder Assaf Rappaport — co-founded Enigma with longtime friend Gal Niv. The two met while competing in hacking competitions as young teens, then became close friends while serving together in Israel’s elite Unit 8200, where they conducted cybersecurity research.

Shardul Shah, partner at Index Ventures: “There are a lot of robotics industry insiders participating in the next wave of embodied intelligence, but Jonathan and Gal are outsiders — they’re not roboticists. It affords them more room for originality. Someone who’s an insider may start with the capability of teleoperation or dexterity, but Enigma is starting from a very different place: ‘What’s the ultimate experience?’”

Jacobi told TechCrunch that Enigma aims to make human-robot interactions completely effortless. “If you had to do your dishes and spent 15 minutes explaining to a robot where to put everything, everyone reaches the point of ‘Forget it, I’ll just do it myself.’ Right now, everyone is at that point — even with the most capable models.”

The public test will evaluate different ways for people to communicate with its robots — text, audio, video examples, or tap/drag/drop. Jacobi said the startup is already partnering with companies in healthcare, logistics, and entertainment, though specific business use cases were not disclosed.