Norway and USA-based Trener Robotics (formerly T-ROBOTICS), the developer of an AI robot skills platform for manufacturing, today announced a €26 million ($32 million) Series A round to accelerate their T-Labs R&D, new skill training, global talent acquisition, and market and partner expansion.
The round was co-led by Engine Ventures and IAG Capital Partners, with participation from Cadence and Geodesic Capital, through Nikon’s NFocus Fund. Shanda Ventures, Emergent Ventures, Fitz Gate Ventures, Techable VC, Radius Capital Ventures, and Raisewell Ventures also participated in the round. Following closely on its Seed round, Trener Robotics’ total funding to date is over €31 million ($38 million).
“For decades, industrial robotics has been limited by dynamic complexity, confining millions of robotic arms to repetitive, single-purpose tasks in highly controlled environments,” says Dr Asad Tirmizi, co-founder and CEO of Trener Robotics. “We’re fundamentally changing this – transforming robots into intelligent, adaptable teammates by replacing procedural programming with a control system that supports a growing library of production-ready skills.”
In the wider European robotics and industrial AI landscape in 2025–2026, several adjacent funding rounds highlight sustained capital deployment into automation platforms and intelligent control systems.
Poland’s Nomagic raised €8.3 million to scale its AI-driven physical operations platform (following a larger €41.5 million round earlier in 2025), while London-based Neuracore secured €2.5 million to build a unified robot-learning infrastructure. In Switzerland, Flexion raised €43 million to develop reinforcement learning systems for humanoid robotics, and Forgis secured €3.8 million to automate industrial machines.
Germany’s RobCo closed a €100 million round to expand its modular AI-driven robotic manufacturing systems, while SEAL Robotics raised €1.7 million for AI-enhanced modular robots in container logistics.
Combined, these disclosed rounds amount to approximately €158 million invested across European robotics and automation startups over the same period.
Although none of these companies are headquartered in Norway, the aggregate funding activity illustrates a broader European push towards adaptive, AI-enabled industrial automation – a category into which Trener Robotics’ €26 million Series A aligns, particularly in the development of intelligence layers and learning systems for industrial robots.
“Our go-to-market strategy empowers systems integrators and OEMs with a robot AI skills platform for deploying and controlling robots across diverse industrial environments,” adds Dr Tirmizi.
Founded in 2024 by CEO Dr Asad Tirmizi and CTO Dr Lars Tingelstad, Trener Robotics aims to transform robotics by combining advanced AI for intuitive programming with pre-trained skill models that are expert at specific tasks.
Dr Tirmizi previously worked at Vicarious, a robotics company acquired by Google, and contributed to the robotics and haptics programme at ByteDance Inc., following a tenure at a European manufacturing research institute. Dr Tingelstad served as an Associate Professor of Robotic Production at NTNU.
The company’s software, Acteris, gives users ease and capabilities for their robots, allowing them to think, adapt, and perform complex jobs. Headquartered in San Francisco (USA) and Trondheim (Norway), the Trener Robotics team consists of industry veterans whose experience spans companies in robotics and technology, including Universal Robots, ABB, Vicarious, Google, KUKA, Autodesk, and TikTok.
Acteris is a robot agnostic skills platform that instead of rigid coding lets operators describe tasks to automate in their own words, turning conversational input into executable automation. By using physical AI to master vision, language, and movement, the platform adapts to changing parts and unstructured production environments in real-time.
Trained on visual, haptic, language, and action data, Acteris enables industrial robots to self-learn and thrive as workers in complex production environments. Manufacturers using the platform reportedly gain:
- An agentic interface enabling robot programming through natural conversation, intuitive task sequences, and high-fidelity simulation – empowering end users and system integrators of any skill level to build safe, high-performance applications
- Part identification and handling with vision, even under adverse conditions
- Optimised robot motions that react to changes with unprecedented robustness
- Intelligent collision avoidance and safety features that mimic common sense
- Real-time production dashboards for performance monitoring
“When we co-led Trener Robotics’ Seed round, we saw a team with a clear vision to solve one of automation’s biggest bottlenecks,” says Reed Sturtevant, General Partner at Engine Ventures. “Their execution and ability to rapidly scale has been remarkable. This traction positions Acteris as the intelligence layer for physical automation and reinforces their ability to scale through partner-led distribution.”
In 2025, Trener Robotics showed promising momentum, collaborating with more than 15 solutions and integration partners across Europe and the U.S., and integrating leading robot brands like ABB, Universal Robots and FANUC into Acteris.
According to data provided by the company, the market for flexible, adaptable automation is advancing at 14.3% CAGR, driven by persistent labor shortages, demand for high-mix production, and rising operational costs that prompt manufacturers to seek solutions with a rapid return on investment.
“Industrial automation is at an inflection point, with Trener Robotics well-positioned as a platform accessible to manufacturers of all sizes, creating a repeatable path for expanding capabilities beyond CNC machine tending. This is precisely what small and mid-sized enterprises globally need to compete as AI redefines manufacturing,” says Dennis Sacha, Partner at IAG Capital Partners.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/02/norway-and-us-based-trener-robotics-secures-e26-million-to-expand-industrial-ai-automation/
