$4.95m · Pre-Seed · Robotics · Zürich, Switzerland
Zürich-based Exclaim Robotics has raised a $4.95m pre-seed round co-led by Founderful and Playfair. Announced as the company emerged from stealth, the financing will support its first prototypes, robotics hardware and engineering hires, according to Data Center Dynamics and EU-Startups.
Bringing “remote hands” to the rack
Exclaim is developing autonomous mobile robots for precise, rack-side maintenance inside AI data centres. Its initial task set includes cleaning and replacing optical components, reconnecting copper cabling and reseating drives. The company says the system is intended to navigate a data hall, position itself at a rack and handle components from floor level to the top rail without requiring changes to the building.
That targets one stubbornly physical part of otherwise remotely managed infrastructure. Provisioning, scheduling and failover can happen in software, but a failed optic or badly seated drive still sends a technician into the data hall. Exclaim argues that the move towards 800V DC power inside AI racks raises the safety cost of that work. The company also presents unattended maintenance as a route to faster interventions and tighter control over physical access, though those benefits remain product goals rather than demonstrated operating results.
The commercial test is therefore not whether a robot can complete a task once. It is whether Exclaim can identify the correct component, manipulate unfamiliar cable and rack layouts without damage, and recover safely when confidence is low. The company says its autonomy-first design will request teleoperation rather than attempt a task it cannot complete confidently. That fallback may help early deployments, but the economics will depend on how quickly real-world experience reduces the number of human interventions.
From prototype to dependable service
Founder and CEO Helen Oleynikova brings robotics experience from ETH Zürich, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Google, while the current team includes engineers with backgrounds at ETH Zürich, Skydio and Meta. Oleynikova also co-created nvblox, the 3D mapping and collision-avoidance library included in NVIDIA Isaac ROS, according to Data Center Dynamics.
The company is still at the prototype-building stage. It has not publicly named a data-centre customer, pilot, production timetable or measured intervention results. The useful next milestone is therefore a repeatable rack-side task completed on live infrastructure without damage, followed by evidence that the same workflow can be deployed across different equipment layouts. That would begin to show whether Exclaim is building a scalable maintenance service rather than a succession of bespoke robotics projects.
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Industrial robotics is a deployment problem, not just an AI challenge explains why reliability, intervention rates and repeatable installation matter more than a compelling robot demonstration.
Sources checked:
Exclaim Robotics · Sifted · Data Center Dynamics · EU-Startups · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
