While one could argue that robotics is seeing a surge in investor interest because of AI — and it’s not wrong to acknowledge AI’s role in the advancement of robotic tech — investors who have focused on the category longer than the last few years said the industry didn’t get to this point just because of advancements in AI over the past few years. Kira Noodleman, a partner at Bee Partners, told that the last decade of trial and error helped startups figure out what the market is actually looking for when it comes to robotics and automation. Some companies, like Rapid Robotics, which Noodleman backed, shut down trying to figure out what the market wanted. Those failures have helped the next batch of startup founders, who now have a much better idea of what potential customers want from this sector. Falling hardware costs have also driven investor interest in the sector, said Fady Saad, a general partner at early-stage robotics-focused Cybernetix Ventures. “The cost of building robotics has been going dramatically down,” Saad said. “Advances in sensor technology, compute, and batteries, all of that, it was the perfect timing to start full-stack robotics solutions.”