Physical AI startup Tensrai raises Rs 3.4 Cr Pre-seed funding from multiple investors
Hyderabad-based Physical AI startup Tensrai has raised Rs 3.4 crore in a pre-seed funding round from India Accelerator, Finvolve, Hyderabad Angels and other angel investors.
The company said in a press release that the funds will be deployed towards accelerating technology development, expanding its engineering and deployment capabilities, and supporting its entry into domestic and international markets.
Co-founded by Sai Nikhil Rao Gona, Venkata Sai Charan Chalamalasetty, Harshith Uppalapati and Vivek Datta, Tensrai is building a unified, retrofittable autonomy platform that allows industrial and commercial robots, vehicles and machines to carry out physical tasks independently.
Its platform integrates vision-first navigation, AI-powered localisation, vision-language model (VLM)-based reasoning, autonomous mobility, robotic arm manipulation and vision-language-action (VLA)-based teach-and-deploy capabilities. The technology is designed to enable machines to interpret their surroundings, reason through tasks, acquire new skills and perform operations with minimal human involvement.
Tensrai aims to equip both purpose-built machines and existing equipment with autonomous capabilities through retrofitting, potentially lowering the costs and complexity associated with adopting robotics across industrial and commercial environments.
The startup is focusing on use cases such as autonomous material handling and cleaning in factories, warehouses, airports, hospitals, shopping malls and commercial campuses. It is also developing a general-purpose mobile manipulator that combines autonomous movement with robotic arms to undertake tasks across material handling, cleaning, manufacturing and construction.
Tensrai intends to build multiple revenue streams through robot sales, autonomy retrofitting, Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) and customised solutions. The company also plans to expand its presence in international markets.
The funding comes at a time of growing interest in Physical AI, which brings together artificial intelligence, robotics and machines to enable systems to understand and interact with the physical world. Unlike software-based AI applications, Physical AI technologies are designed to convert perception and reasoning into actions in real-world environments.
By developing a common autonomy platform that can be deployed across different types of machines, Tensrai aims to help businesses automate repetitive, labour-intensive and operationally complex processes across industrial and commercial sectors.
