Enigma
SeedRobot control, like a volume knob
AI foundation models and interfaces that make controlling any robot as easy as adjusting a volume knob.
About
Enigma builds AI foundation models and control interfaces designed to make operating a robot feel instinctive rather than requiring specialist programming knowledge. Rather than chasing raw model capability, the company is studying how ordinary people naturally try to direct machines, and opened more than 100 of its proprietary robots — housed in Israel and California — to a public online experiment at robots.online where anyone can control them in real time to paint, sword-fight, or run chemistry experiments. Founded less than a year ago by CEO Jonathan Jacobi, who joined Microsoft at 17 as its youngest-ever employee, and CTO Gal Niv, both veterans of Israel's Unit 8200, Enigma exited stealth in July 2026 with a $71M seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with Conviction Partners also participating. The interaction data gathered from the public experiment feeds back into training models and interfaces the company hopes will generalize across different robot hardware and environments.
DailyDropout Take
Enigma is skipping the crowded race to build smarter robot brains and betting instead that the real bottleneck is the interface — most robots fail not because they can't act, but because directing them still requires specialist training. A $71M seed from Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, backed by operators from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Wiz, signals serious conviction from people who've seen adoption bottlenecks up close. Turning robots.online into a public data-collection experiment is a clever way to bootstrap interaction data most robotics startups can't easily get, but the company still has to prove that lessons from teleoperating painting and sword-fighting robots generalize to real industrial deployments.
Discovery signal: Closed a $71M seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital less than a year after founding, then immediately opened 100+ robots to public control to gather human-robot interaction data at scale.
What Makes Them Unique
Focuses on the human-robot interface and real-world interaction data rather than raw model capability, running a large public experiment to learn how non-experts instinctively try to control robots.
100+ AI-powered robots on robots.online
Public robots available
$71M
Total raised
Target Markets
Founders
Jonathan Jacobi
Co-Founder & CEO
Joined Microsoft at 17 as its youngest-ever employee before co-founding Enigma; served in Israel's Unit 8200.
Gal Niv
Co-Founder & CTO
Veteran of Israel's Unit 8200; met Jonathan Jacobi through hacking competitions as teenagers.
Funding History
Lead: Index Ventures
Investors
Firms
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