Investing in OpenMind
August 11th, 2025 | Mehaa Amirthalingam, Jonathan Gieg
THE ISOLATION PROBLEM
A key limitation in robotics today is the ecosystem’s nature of isolation. While many companies are building humanoid robots, most of them operate in proprietary (closed, brand-specific) systems. This creates fragmented silos, where each robot is effectively isolated, only compatible with its brand’s software and hardware. The outcome? Robots from different manufacturers can’t easily talk to each other, coordinate tasks, or share intelligence. This limits flexibility, makes it difficult to innovate, and means robots can’t truly adapt to unpredictable, complex environments. With this piece missing, the potential for innovation within the robotics industry is nearly impossible.
WHY WE INVESTED
OpenMind addresses this “missing layer” in the robotics industry: the intelligence infrastructure that would allow different robots to work together. They are building tools and protocols to make it possible for robots to think, collaborate, and act together across various environments. This decentralized approach aims to break down silos and make robots more useful.
OpenMind has two products: OM1, a hard-ware agnostic operating system and FABRIC, an open-source protocol that allows robots to share knowledge and participate in a shared intelligence network. Unlike today’s robots, which are often confined to closed, vendor-specific ecosystems, OM1 enables flexibility and interoperability across platforms, allowing robots to adapt more easily to diverse real-world environments. FABRIC provides a secure way for robots to identify themselves, share situational context, and coordinate actions across different locations and manufacturers. Acting as a “trust layer,” FABRIC allows robots to understand where they are, who else is around, and how to behave in dynamic, multi-agent environments. This is a critical capability as autonomous systems become more prevalent in public and industrial spaces.
OM1 and FABRIC work together for a shared intelligence infrastructure, giving robots the modularity, awareness, and cooperative capabilities missing from today’s siloed systems.
THE TEAM
The company is led by Jan Liphardt, a Stanford professor, who spent his career across the fields of AI, biology, and decentralized systems. He believes, “If AI is the brain and robotics is the body, coordination is the nervous system.” The broader team brings together experts from robotics, distributed systems, security, and major companies like Databricks, Perplexity, Palantir, McKinsey and more. OpenMind also plans to scale its engineering heads and increase its collaboration with partners to integrate OM1 and FABRIC into applications across the globe.
LOOKING AHEAD
We’re excited to lead the $20M funding round for OpenMind and continue supporting them on their journey to become the backbone of interoperability and collective intelligence in the robotics industry.
For more information, please visit: openmind.org