The round was co-led by Valor Atreides AI Fund and Hummingbird Ventures, with continued participation from Conviction, Abstract and A*, alongside Grant Gordon. The financing takes Watney’s total capital raised to more than $100 million, following a previous $21 million seed round.
Watney builds robots for physical data-center operations rather than warehouse logistics. Its systems are designed for work including swapping network cables and maintaining server infrastructure. The company says it develops robot embodiments around individual operational requirements rather than reproducing existing human workflows.
Meta has been testing two dual-arm Watney robots at its Altoona, Iowa data center since June 2025, according to reporting originally published by WIRED. The robots have been used to insert and remove network cables from server racks under human supervision. They remain slower than human technicians and require supervision and recharging.
Meta is separately testing robotics from ABB and Kinova for tasks including reseating hardware and power-cycling servers at its data-center facilities.
Watney says its deployed systems have achieved 99.99% uptime across hundreds of thousands of operating hours at customer sites. That performance figure is company-reported and has not been independently verified.
The company was founded in San Francisco in 2023 by Ryan Gannon and Sean Cheong.
