Armatrix Raises $2.1 Million Round Led by pi Ventures to Build Next-Generation Snake-Like Robotic Arms to automate confined space operations

One of only four companies globally developing this form-factor robotic arm capable of inspection, maintenance and operational tasks within confined industrial spaces using a single adaptable hardware platform

Bengaluru, India | February 25, 2026: Armatrix, a Bengaluru-based deep-tech robotics startup, has raised $2.1 million in a pre-seed  funding round led by pi Ventures, with participation from Inuka Capital, Boundless Ventures, Boost VC, Turbostart, and returning investor gradCapital. The funds will be used to complete development of its proprietary snake-like flexible robotic arm technology, expand the engineering and R&D team, and accelerate pilot deployments across industrial customers.

Founded in 2024 by three IIT Kanpur engineers, Vishrant Dave, Prateesh Awasthi, and Ayush Ranjan, Armatrix specializes in building hyper-redundant, snake-like robotic systems. The company has built a functional 3-metre proof-of-concept arm and attracted institutional backing in under two years.

Armatrix is one of few global companies in the world developing a hyper-redundant snake-like robotic arm, a system designed to do what conventional robotic arms and human operators find challenging to do: enter confined, hazardous industrial spaces and perform precision tasks safely from the outside. By integrating the hardware, AI-driven control, and digital-twin simulation, Armatrix is enabling critical industries to achieve unprecedented levels of safety, precision, and efficiency.

The company aims to automate operations in hazardous and confined environments across sectors such as shipbuilding, nuclear, oil & gas and aviation, where fatal injuries involving confined spaces have been reported. Inspection and maintenance of critical industrial infrastructure: storage and fuel tanks, hulls and reactors, routinely require human entry into confined and hazardous spaces. Armatrix’s technology addresses the critical challenge of maintenance downtime and is poised to transform the global robotics maintenance market, valued at $41.66 billion in 2023 and projected to reach $150 billion by 2032.

What Armatrix Is Building

The Armatrix arm measures 3-5 metres in length and just 50-150 mm in diameter, with more than 22 degrees of freedom. It threads through tight access points and navigates complex internal geometries that are physically inaccessible to rigid robotic systems. Unlike single-purpose inspection tools, the platform uses modular, swappable end-effectors enabling one singular arm to perform inspection and operations without changing the base hardware. For industrial operators, this means one platform across an entire facility’s maintenance needs, not a separate system for each task.

Armatrix’s core technology is defined by its superior reachability and actuation system. The robotic arm features flexibility for seamless navigation, modular end-effectors, and an AI-based navigation system for real-time adaptability. The key differentiation lies in its extrinsic actuation architecture – motors are separate from the arm. This allows the Armatrix robot to operate safely and effectively in any environment, including flammable, liquid, or high-temperature zones, where conventional intrinsic-actuation robotic arms (with motors on the arm) would fail. The arm is guided by AI-based control that enables real-time path planning in unpredictable environments, combined with digital twin simulation for pre-deployment modelling.

“Hazardous industrial operations should not require humans to enter unsafe and confined spaces. At Armatrix, we are building a robotic platform that is genuinely different from anything currently deployed in India, and aims to augment maintenance and operations for global critical infrastructure. Our mission is to move from a reactive, high-cost maintenance model to a proactive, zero-downtime standard,   creating a paradigm shift in industrial inspection and maintenance.  This funding enables us to scale from proof-of-concept to early adopters, and prove out the platform across inspection and other operations in the field”, said Vishrant Dave, Co-Founder & CEO, Armatrix Automations.

“India’s industries face costly maintenance and inspection failures, causing downtime, safety hazards, and revenue loss. The market need for advanced maintenance robotics is not only massive but also urgent. We backed Armatrix because the convergence of its groundbreaking hardware and AI-driven control architecture solves a real, costly problem for critical industries. Armatrix’s unique extrinsic actuation offers a critical advantage over competitors and we believe that  Armatrix is poised to define a new category in industrial robotics, starting in India,” said Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures.

Looking ahead, Armatrix aims to emerge as a globally competitive deep-tech robotics company, building AI-native, high-performance robotic systems that set new benchmarks in safety, precision, and efficiency for mission-critical industrial operations.