In Paris, a New Stealth Startup Named UMA Enters the Humanoid Race

Paris, France — The European humanoid robotics landscape, already bristling with activity from Munich to London, has a new, mysterious entrant.

A stealth-mode startup called UMA has quietly begun recruiting a "founding team" in Paris, aiming to build general-purpose humanoid robots. While the company has made no official press announcements and its website—uma.bot—currently displays only a logo and a recruitment link, a detailed analysis of its open job listings reveals a venture with significant technical ambition and a clear philosophical alignment with the "AI-first" school of robotics.

Decoding the Listings: Style and Simulation

While many details remain under wraps, UMA’s recruitment posts paint a picture of a company attempting to bridge the gap between heavy hardware and "end-to-end" artificial intelligence.

Perhaps the most telling role is for a "Robotics Engineer – Simulation & Stylized Humanoid Walk." The phrasing suggests UMA is prioritizing more than just utilitarian locomotion. The listing explicitly asks for candidates capable of "designing walks that feel natural, expressive, and adaptable" and balancing "stability with style."

The technical approach outlined in the listings is decidedly modern. UMA is hiring a Research Scientist to "train and deploy policies using reinforcement learning (RL), imitation learning, and multimodal foundation-model approaches."

The Data Strategy: Humans in the Loop

UMA appears to be building a data engine from day one. The company is hiring Robotic Teleoperators to "provide support to R&D" and "participate in data collection and labeling."

UMA’s listings describe a "sim-to-real" pipeline, indicating they intend to train their models heavily in physics simulations before transferring those behaviors to physical hardware to "close the sim-to-real gap."

On the hardware side, the listings for Mechatronics and Firmware Engineers describe a "humanoid-scale robotic platform" involving "distributed controllers," safety-critical real-time communication (RTOS, EtherCAT), and custom electronics. The team is looking for engineers who can "build everything from scratch," suggesting UMA is developing proprietary actuators or at least deeply integrating off-the-shelf components rather than simply assembling a kit.

A Crowded Continent

UMA enters a European market that is rapidly becoming as competitive as its North American counterpart.

• In the UK: Humanoid is aggressively targeting the logistics sector, recently completing a bin-picking trial with industrial giant Schaeffler using its "pre-alpha" robot. Their focus is on high-torque actuators and modularity for "labor-intensive operations". There's also Kinisi in Bristol, who recently deployed their first robot.
• In France: UMA shares its home city with Wandercraft, which has successfully transitioned its "Calvin" robot into automotive plants. There's also Pollen Robotics, out of Bordeaux, that was aquired by Hugging Face earlier this year.
• In Germany: The Munich ecosystem is dominating the industrial conversation, with Neura Robotics chasing a multi-billion Euro valuation and Agile Robots launching the bipedal Agile ONE.
• In Norway: Physical Robotics AS was recently founded by the "principal inventor" of the 1X EVE robot. The 1X that was started as Halodi Robotics in Moss, Norway.
• In Sweden: Hexagon has leveraged its sensor dominance to launch the AEON robot, while
• In Switzerland: Zürich based Flexion recently came out of stealth announcing their ambition to build a "horizontal software layer" for humanoid robotics.

UMA’s pitch to prospective employees emphasizes agility and equity, framing the opportunity as a chance to join a "founding team" with "direct impact." The company describes itself as "young and agile," aiming to be a "worldwide leader" by leveraging Paris’s talent pool—which the company calls "one of the world’s top 3 hubs for AI."

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