Automotive built modern Europe. Cars, parts and the factories behind them supported millions of jobs across Germany and its neighbors for decades. David Reger, founder and chief executive of the German robotics company Neura Robotics, says Europe needs a new economic pillar bigger than automotive itself. His answer is artificial intelligence built into machines that sense and act in the real world, known as physical AI. He calls it the one path within reach, a way for Europe to matter globally again by building on strengths it already has.
Robotics has made grand promises before, and much of the early excitement faded before robots reached factory floors in meaningful numbers. Reporters and investors have watched the breakthrough moment keep slipping.
His reply centers on speed. Reger runs one of the companies building physical AI, yet he told Bloomberg the field moves so fast even he finds it hard to predict a year ahead. He called the pace tremendous, almost hard to accept. Results appearing in his own labs, day after day, are why he trusts a pace that sounds implausible on paper.
Raising money for robotics used to run almost entirely on imagination. Founders described machines handling real work, and investors had to decide how much to trust a picture nobody had tested outside a lab. Reger says closing the distance between vision and proof used to be the hardest part of raising robotics money, harder even than the engineering.
In his account, Neura’s own numbers are that proof. The company closed a Series C funding round of up to $1.4 billion in June 2026, at a valuation near $7 billion. Its backers include Amazon, Nvidia, Bosch and the European Investment Bank. Neura calls the round the largest ever raised by a robotics company that builds the hardware, the AI and the training systems itself. Existing orders and deployment deals already top $1 billion, by the company’s own count.
Reger expects major breakthroughs in physical AI within one or two years, though by his own account the field is hard to predict even a year ahead. Those breakthroughs have not happened yet, and the full round arrives only if Neura hits agreed performance targets.
