Physical AI · Robot Workers
Tutor Intelligence Raises $75 Million to Rent Out Robot Workers by the Hour
Its robots are in almost four times as many facilities as a year ago. Andreessen Horowitz led.
· 2 min read
Tutor Intelligence closed a $75 million Series B, and its customers pay for robot work by the hour or the pick with no purchase and no long-term contract, the company said.
Pricing robot work by the hour turns a capital purchase into a running cost, so a finance team compares a robot hour against the loaded cost of a labor hour. The only published rate is hourly, from $14, and it leaves open how much human help each of those hours needs.
Who is paying for the build-out?
The round brings Tutor’s total funding to $117 million. Union Square Ventures, which led the Series A, and Neo, which led the seed round, also took part. The money goes to training Tutor’s robot foundation models and to manufacturing its two robots, Sonny and Cassie, all of which Tutor plans to build in the United States.
What does a customer pay?
Tutor lists its robot workers from $14 an hour on its website. Support, maintenance and every model update are included, and terms run month to month. Tutor also sells Sonny and Cassie outright with an annual service plan, so a buyer can choose a purchase over the hourly meter. Tutor says its robots cut the cost per pick in order fulfillment by 10% to 50%.
Remote human operators, whom Tutor calls tutors, step in when a robot meets a situation it cannot handle. How often that happens decides how much labor sits behind each robot hour, and Tutor did not say. It also did not say what it charges per pick or how many facilities it serves.
How fast is it growing?
Tutor’s robots now work in almost four times as many facilities as before, and the company expects more than 1,000 robots under contract by the end of 2027. Nearly a third of the organizations that received Tutor robots in the 12 months before the Nov. 2 announcement were existing customers adding more.
“We can hardly build robots fast enough,” CEO Josh Gruenstein said. Repeat orders from existing customers are the number a buyer can weigh against Tutor’s own cost claims.
Does a robot hour at Tutor’s rate, with a remote operator behind it, still undercut the loaded cost of the labor hour it replaces?
