Abu Dhabi-based investors Shorooq and Presight have led a $100 million Series A round in Maven Robotics, a Santa Clara-based startup building intelligent robots for warehouses and factories.
The round matters for UAE readers because it shows Abu Dhabi capital reaching directly into Silicon Valley's robotics scene, backing a company aimed squarely at the warehouse automation market, which is worth tens of billions of dollars.
The investment was channelled through the Presight–Shorooq AI and Bedaya Funds managed by Shorooq, alongside RoboStrategy, LocalGlobe, Vine Ventures and XTX Ventures.
What Maven Robotics builds
Founded in 2024, Maven Robotics designs intelligent industrial robots for logistics and manufacturing. Its machines currently run up to sixteen hours a day at customer sites with reliability above 99 percent. The company's initial focus is mixed-case palletizing and tote handling, a segment it estimates represents an $80 billion addressable market. With the new funding, Maven plans to build 250 of its third-generation machines.
The founding team includes veterans of AI, robotics, engineering and autonomous systems programmes, led by chief executive and co-founder Hamza Derbas.
Why Shorooq and Presight are backing it
Bilal Baloch, Partner at Shorooq, framed the deal as part of a broader shift in where AI investment is heading. "The first wave of AI reshaped how we work with information; the next will reshape how the physical economy runs, and that is a far larger prize," he said. "What sets Maven apart is that Hamza and his team are not chasing a research benchmark — they are solving one industrial problem at a time, with the discipline and return-on-investment focus that real operators demand. Backing a company like this, from Abu Dhabi into Silicon Valley, is precisely what it means to invest in the frontier from the region, for the world."
Thomas Pramotedham, Chief Executive Officer of Presight, a global leader in applied AI for intelligent systems and a G42 company, said the round reflects a focus on practical deployment rather than research alone. "AI creates value when it works reliably in the environments where businesses operate," he said. "Maven is applying intelligence to the physical work of moving and handling goods, where performance is measured in operational results. Through the Presight–Shorooq Fund I, we aim to support companies like Maven with capital, applied AI expertise and relationships that can help them scale. This investment reflects our belief that the value of intelligence is realized through its application."
Maven's view of the region
For Derbas, the partnership is about more than money. "We're not in the race to build the biggest model — we're in the race to solve industrial labour and make this work possible at the scale the world needs," he said. "Shorooq and Presight understood that from the first conversation. Beyond the capital, they bring an ecosystem — compute, data and enterprise relationships — that helps us deploy faster and reach customers we might not have reached alone. We also see the region as a node from where we can take our robots global."
