Shine Capital and a16z Speedrun co-led the round. Box Group, Carnegie Mellon University Endowment, Innovation Endeavors, SV Angel, Ovo Fund, Valkyrie, Zelda Ventures, Alpha Square Group, Founders Future and Brave Capital also participated.
The company’s browser-based platform places a robot’s control software inside simulated factories, warehouses and other operating environments. Teams can generate hazardous or unusual scenarios, vary human movements and rerun the tests following software updates or changes to the deployment site.
SafeWorld says its system uses reactive human-motion models to test situations including blind-corner encounters, people carrying objects, trips and falls, and potential contact with robotic arms. It records measures including detection performance, stopping distances and collision avoidance.
Early pilots are underway with automotive manufacturers, warehouse-automation companies and medical-device producers, according to SafeWorld. TechCrunch also identified solar-construction startup Gritt Robotics as a development partner testing whether robotic arms can operate safely alongside workers installing photovoltaic panels.
SafeWorld was founded by Carnegie Mellon Safe AI Lab director Ding Zhao, former StartX CEO Kyle Wong and former Salesforce machine-learning engineer Simo Rachidi. The company says its platform can run millions of simulated edge cases, although it has not published comparative accuracy, coverage or real-world incident-reduction results.
