Ultra raises $50 million to rent out warehouse robots by the month, with Physical Intelligence supplying the brains

Ultra, a Brooklyn robotics startup that leases packing robots to warehouses under a monthly "robots as a service" model, said on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, that it has raised a $50 million Series A led by Framework Ventures, with Y Combinator participating. Combined with an earlier $12 million seed, Ultra has now raised $62 million. The company is also deepening its partnership with Physical Intelligence, whose AI models run its robots.

The robot story everyone wants to tell is the humanoid that walks into your kitchen. The robot story that actually pays right now looks like this: a two-armed box-packer bolted into a third-party warehouse, rented by the month like a forklift, stuffing padded mailers at 3 a.m. Ultra's bet has two smart parts. Renting instead of selling removes the big upfront check that kills most warehouse automation deals, and outsourcing the brain to Physical Intelligence means Ultra doesn't have to win the AI race to win customers. Physical Intelligence gets something it can't fake in a lab: hours of real orders with real messy items. The fair caveats are that the revenue is undisclosed, "500,000 orders" is the company's own count, and renting robots means Ultra carries the hardware risk if they break or sit idle. But if the next wave of AI money lands anywhere physical, a boring robot that ships boxes on a subscription is a pretty good place to start.

On Friday, 9 October 2026, Fortune’s Term Sheet reported that Ultra, a Brooklyn robotics startup, announced a $50 million Series A led by Framework Ventures, with Y Combinator participating. An earlier $12 million seed was led by Y Combinator and Next View. Those two rounds bring Ultra’s announced funding to $62 million. A Series A is a later venture check than a seed — the first institutional round. Those dollar figures are Fortune’s account of Ultra’s announcement.

Ultra is based in Brooklyn, New York, and was established in 2024. The chief executive and co-founder is Jon Miller Schwartz. Those lines are Ultra’s and Fortune’s.

Its robot is called Operator, or OP1. Ultra describes it as a multi-purpose AI robot for repetitive warehouse work: order packing, sorting, and kitting, up to 24 hours a day. Packing is putting items into a bag or box for shipping. Sorting is splitting items into the right piles. Kitting is grouping the parts of an order so they ship together. Ultra lists deployments in New York, Georgia, New Jersey, and Texas, including a site running six OP1s side by side. Those product and site lines are Ultra’s.

Ultra says its robots have packed more than 500,000 orders for shipping across U.S. warehouses. That count is the company’s. It is not an audited shipment total.

Customers do not buy the robots outright. They pay an up-front integration fee for installation, then an ongoing monthly fee for hardware and software support. Schwartz told Fortune the company has booked significant revenue — he did not say how much — and that demand has let Ultra raise prices. Those business lines are Fortune’s account of Schwartz.

The work is split into body and brains. Ultra builds and installs the robots. Physical Intelligence supplies the AI that lets them learn and adapt to each customer’s setup. In return, Physical Intelligence gets real-world warehouse data to train its models. Fortune notes Physical Intelligence is valued at $5.6 billion and was founded by a team from Google DeepMind. Those partnership lines are Fortune’s.

Schwartz argues that humanoid robots — machines built to walk and look like people — get most of the attention, but other robot forms are doing the real work today. Asked when humanoids will scale like this, he told Fortune to give it five years. That read is his, as Fortune reports it.

Fortune names other warehouse automation players including Exotec, Amazon, and Travis Kalanick’s new company Atoms. Those names are Fortune’s field list. They are not Ultra customers.

In plain terms, Ultra said on Friday that it raised a $50 million Series A led by Framework Ventures, bringing total announced funding to $62 million after a $12 million seed. The Brooklyn company rents packing robots by the month instead of selling them. Physical Intelligence supplies the AI; Ultra supplies the hardware and the warehouse hours. Ultra says the fleet has packed more than 500,000 orders. Revenue was not disclosed.