Melbourne robotics startup Andromeda Robotics has raised a $23 million Series A led by US firm Forerunner Ventures, lifting its valuation to $100 million and funding a push into American aged care, Business News Australia reported in September 2025.
The company is betting that loneliness, rather than physical labour, is the first job a humanoid robot can do well in a care home. As many as 40% of residents in Australian aged care homes receive no visitors. The US faces the same isolation problem alongside a worsening shortage of care staff, and Andromeda pitches its robot as support for those staff, not a replacement for them.
How Abi works
Andromeda’s robot is called Abi. She stands about 120cm tall, is brightly coloured and can blow bubbles. Abi keeps a memory of each resident, hosts music quizzes and singalongs, sways along to songs and holds conversations in a resident’s preferred language.
The rebuilt version, called Genesis Abi, is described by the company as fully autonomous. Care teams set her daily schedule and she moves around the facility on her own, leading group activities or spending one on one time with residents, according to Business News Australia.
The founders
Andromeda was founded in 2022 by mechatronics engineer Grace Brown, who is chief executive, and Yan Chen. Brown has relocated to San Francisco to lead the US expansion. The company has said its longer term goal is a companion robot for the home, with aged care as the starting market.
The raise
Forerunner Ventures led the round. New investors Rethink Impact, Main Sequence, Artesian, Visible Ventures and Trampoline joined existing backers Purpose Ventures, which led the seed round, and Startmate.
Inside Ageing described the deal as a record for a women-led Series A, and Business News Australia noted that several of the partners behind it at the investing funds are women.
The money is going towards entering US senior care, shortening the Australian waitlist and hiring across engineering and customer success, the company said. One of the first Genesis deployments was planned for a Mecwacare aged care home.
The wider race
Humanoid robotics has so far been dominated by well funded companies in the US and China, many of them targeting factory and warehouse work. Andromeda has chosen a narrower path: a smaller, friendlier machine aimed at social care, where the need is easy to show and the hardware does not have to lift heavy loads.
Jack’s take
Australia rarely comes up in conversations about humanoid robots, so a Melbourne team pulling in a top US fund is worth noting. Starting in aged care makes sense to me, because the gap Abi fills is obvious to anyone who has visited a nursing home. The harder test is whether it scales in the US without losing the warmth that makes it work.