Former Apple Engineers' Physical AI Startup Lyte Raises $165M At $1.6B Valuation

Former Apple Engineers' Physical AI Startup Lyte Raises $165M At $1.6B Valuation

Lyte, a physical AI startup building sensing and perception technology for robots, has raised $165 million in Series C funding at a $1.6 billion post-money valuation. The financing, led by Maverick Silicon, brings Lyte's total raised to $272 million. Fidelity Management And Research Co., which led Lyte's Series B, also participated in the Series C, along with Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, Ora Global (formerly Exor Ventures), and additional existing and new investors. The Sunnyvale, California-based company was founded in 2021 by Alexander Shpunt, Arman Hajati and Yuval Gerson -- a trio of former Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone giant's advanced sensing and perception technologies. Shpunt had also previously co-founded PrimeSense, a startup whose 3D-sensing technology powered Microsoft Kinect before Apple acquired the company in 2013. The trio's past work helped bring 3D perception to the mainstream and later became a foundation for Apple's Face ID technology. Lyte is building custom silicon, 4D sensing, RGB, motion awareness and AI software to help robots sense where they are and what is moving around them. Initially, its customers are primarily in the warehousing and manufacturing industries. The startup operated in stealth until earlier this year when it emerged and announced it had raised $107 million in Series A and B funding. 'A new kind of perception' "Physical AI will create entirely new categories of robots, and every one of them will need to understand the world around it," CEO Shpunt told Crunchbase News via email. "That requires a new kind of perception: precise, real-time understanding of geometry and motion that machines can trust enough to act on. We built Lyte to become the perception foundation for that future." Funding in the physical AI space has exploded in recent years. In the first half of 2026, global venture funding in the space totaled $47.4 billion across 521 deals, per Crunchbase data. That's up dramatically -- almost 4x -- compared to the second half of 2025 when physical AI startups raised $12 billion across 470 deals. It's also up significantly -- by nearly 80% -- from the $26.4 billion raised across 436 deals in the first half of 2025. Andrew Homan, managing partner at Maverick Silicon, joined Lyte's board of directors as part of the funding round. "Lyte is building a foundational sensing platform that enables a wide range of robots to perceive and understand the world around them," he said in a release. "The breadth and diversity of early customer demand strengthen our conviction that Lyte is poised to become one of the defining technology companies of the robotics era."

Lyte raises $165M at $1.6B valuation to bring accurate perception to robots

Lyte raises $165M at $1.6B valuation to bring accurate perception to robots Robotics perception startup Lyte AI Inc. today announced it raised $165 million in a Series C round led by Maverick Silicon, bringing the company's post-money valuation to $1.6 billion. Since its stealth launch in January 2026, Lyte now ships custom silicon, multimodal sensors and spatial software for intelligent robotics. Vision and sensors are fundamental to artificial intelligence and robotics, allowing them to understand where they are in the world, how to interact with objects, and how to translate motion and physics into digital action. Founded by former Apple and PrimeSense engineers who worked on Face ID and brought 3D perception mainstream through Microsoft Corp.'s Kinect, Lyte is putting this expertise at the forefront of improving the accuracy of robotic vision. "Physical AI has a sensing problem before it has a model problem. A robot cannot act safely on data that does not faithfully describe the world," said Chief Executive and co-founder Alexander Shpunt. The robotics world has been rushing to build foundation models, much of which is driven by massive amounts of visual data. However, once models are trained and deployed, they depend on high-fidelity vision and sensors built into robots themselves. In most cases, robotics platforms depend on off-the-shelf components, such as cameras, infrared and laser tracking. Although this is cheap and fast, it comes with some caveats: random components were never designed to work as a single system; they introduce delays, calibration drift, and inaccurate or noisy data. To solve this emerging problem, the company introduced LyteVision, a platform that combines vision, high-resolution imaging and inertial sensors into a single synchronized system. Lyte's custom silicon orchestrates it to measure motion natively rather than reconstructing it after the fact from cameras and other sensors via software, producing data robots can trust at the source. "Owning the silicon separates companies that define a category from those that participate in one," said Chairman Avigdor Willenz. "Lyte controls every layer of how a robot understands the world and is now taking that breakthrough engineering into production." The company said the financing will allow it to deploy its platform across more AI robotics platforms and environments faster. It will use the money to scale production of the sensing silicon and the sensor platform, advance its AI and perception capabilities and expand deployments to robotics companies and industrial customers. The round included participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, which led Lyte's Series B, along with Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, Ora Global, and additional existing and new investors.