Exclaim Robotics has emerged from stealth with $4.95 million in seed funding, co-led by Playfair Capital and Founderful, to develop AI robots for automating data centre maintenance.<\/p>\n
Founder Helen Oleynikova left ETH Z\u00fcrich in January 2026 to build Exclaim full-time.<\/p>\n
The Swiss startup aims to reduce labour-intensive maintenance, improve operational efficiency and strengthen Europe\u2019s growing robotics ecosystem.<\/p>\n
A Zurich robotics startup wants a robot, not a person, to open the next live AI server rack. Exclaim Robotics<\/a> has come out of stealth with $4.95 million in pre-seed funding, co-led by Playfair Capital<\/a> and Founderful, to build machines that do the maintenance work data centre operators increasingly can\u2019t send a human to do.<\/p>\n Kindred Capital, HCVC, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company, ACE & Company, Amino Collective and several angel investors also participated in the round.\u00a0<\/p>\n The fresh capital will accelerate development of its robotic platform as data centre operators seek new ways to improve efficiency, reduce costs and minimise manual maintenance.<\/p>\n The founder and the robot<\/p>\n Helen Oleynikova<\/a> founded Exclaim after 15 years in robotics at Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Willow Garage and ETH Z\u00fcrich, where she co-created nvblox, a 3D mapping and collision-avoidance tool now built into Nvidia\u2019s Isaac ROS. An earlier stint at Microsoft\u2019s Mixed Reality and AI Lab in Zurich put her on a robotics project for Azure data centres, her first real look at the problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n She left ETH in January 2026 to build Exclaim full time, joined by founding engineer Patrick Pfreundschuh, who holds a PhD from the same university. Two more founding engineers, longtime collaborators of hers, will join in 2027 after leaving their current jobs.<\/p>\n The robot navigates a data hall on its own, finds a rack, and works the front face from floor to top rail without any changes to the building. It\u2019s starting narrow: cleaning and replacing fibre-optic connectors and SFPs (small pluggable network transceivers), copper cabling, and failed drives.<\/p>\n YC-backed Boost Robotics builds similar repair robots for data centres. Watney Robotics is working on comparable autonomy for inside-the-facility logistics and maintenance. Gecko Robotics, further along and better funded, handles broader industrial inspection. Most of them span inspection and logistics.\u00a0<\/p>\n Exclaim believes everything on one job: hands-on repair inside a live 800-volt rack.<\/p>\n The investors and the market<\/p>\n The global data centre robotics market was worth roughly $13.7 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit $44.2 billion by 2030, a 21.6% compound annual growth rate, according to Research and Markets<\/a>. It\u2019s part of a wider bet on the physical layer of AI infrastructure that TFN has tracked before, including Palo Alto-based PicoJool\u2019s $12 million raise for optical connectivity in hyperscale data centres<\/a>.<\/p>\n