O-ID Raises $1.2M to Build Humanoids With Swappable Parts

Key Takeaways

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• Tokyo-based O-ID has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding led by TAWANI Ventures to move its modular industrial robot from prototype toward production.
• CEO Stian Jakobsen says the planned maintenance workflow involves powering down the robot, replacing a module, loading its stored calibration and running readiness checks. Predictive wear monitoring remains in development.
• O-ID is targeting Japanese automotive manufacturing and logistics first. Its Sumitomo Electric letter of intent concerns exploratory wire-harness discussions, not a robot purchase or deployment agreement.

O-ID is betting that an industrial humanoid should be designed around what happens when something breaks. The Tokyo startup has raised $1.2 million to develop modular robots whose joints, limbs and computing hardware can be replaced individually, with the aim of making factory repairs a matter of minutes.

According to a press release supplied to Humanoids Daily, the pre-seed round was led by Chicago-based TAWANI Ventures, with participation from Hustle Fund, Techstars and angel investors, including the founders of Humanoid Guide. O-ID plans to use the money to move its first robot from prototype toward production, initially targeting automotive manufacturing and logistics in Japan.

Updated September 26, 2026, with written answers from CEO Stian Jakobsen to Humanoids Daily and additional context from his Tech.eu interview.

Building repairability into the robot

O-ID describes an architecture with replaceable joints, limbs and compute units. Rather than sending an entire machine away for a failed component, the company aims to let customers replace a module on-site in minutes.

In written answers to Humanoids Daily, CEO Stian Jakobsen described the intended workflow using an elbow actuator showing signs of wear. The predictive-maintenance framework the company is building would detect the change, notify the customer and trigger shipment of a replacement. O-ID plans to include that support in its service agreement.

Someone on the factory floor who has been shown the procedure would power down the robot before swapping the elbow module. The replacement is designed to load its stored calibration, followed by readiness checks before the machine returns to work. The worn module would go back to O-ID for refurbishment.

“They don’t need one of our engineers to fly in,” Jakobsen said. “That’s how simple we want the experience to be.”

He emphasized that achieving this requires designing the whole robot around modularity. “When you’re thinking about hundreds of thousands of robots, keeping them working has to be as scalable as building them.”

The answers describe the planned service experience. O-ID has not supplied measured replacement times, reliability results or evidence of predictive-maintenance accuracy.

That distinction matters at this stage: the supplied modularity video is a product animation illustrating how parts connect and separate, rather than a filmed maintenance trial. Still, it makes the design priority clear. Serviceability is being presented as a core feature of the platform, alongside the ability to change its configuration.

The company’s website lists indicative specifications of 172 centimeters in height, 70 kilograms in weight, a 16-kilogram payload and 30 degrees of freedom, with more than nine modules and a holonomic base. The advertised platform therefore includes a wheeled configuration; the humanoid label should not be read as a promise of a walking biped.

Modularity is already appearing elsewhere in the sector, including Unitree’s dual-arm R1 platforms with fixed and wheeled bases and LimX Dynamics’ reconfigurable TRON 2. O-ID’s particular pitch emphasizes the maintenance and replacement process on a working factory floor.

Japanese manufacturing, with a limited but relevant supplier step

O-ID was founded in Tokyo in 2025 by CEO Stian Jakobsen, from Norway, and CTO Simon Gormuzov, from the Netherlands, who met at Waseda University. Jakobsen previously worked in cyber defense; Gormuzov has a background in mechanical engineering and industrial robotics.

Asked why the founders chose Japan, Jakobsen pointed to manufacturers with decades of experience producing precision automotive components. Some could both supply O-ID and use its robots in their own factories.

“But those relationships take trust,” he told Humanoids Daily. “It’s much harder to navigate that from the outside. Being here, meeting people and building those relationships is a big part of what makes this possible.”

In a separate interview with Tech.eu, Jakobsen acknowledged Japan’s need to catch up in bringing humanoids to market, while arguing that its existing factories, equipment and expertise offer a foundation for that effort. His case for Japan rests on applying an established manufacturing base to a new product category.

The company says its robots will be built and manufactured in Japan. It has also signed a letter of intent with Sumitomo Electric Industries to begin discussions about potentially applying the manufacturer’s technologies to humanoid robot wire harnesses.

That is a relevant area for a machine designed to be repeatedly disconnected and reassembled. But the agreement described in the release is exploratory: it does not establish a production supply contract, a customer order or a factory deployment. O-ID has also filed a provisional U.S. patent application for its modular connector technology.

From a labor shortage to a working product

Japan offers a clear motivation for labor-saving automation. A Recruit Works Institute forecast projects a shortfall of roughly 11 million workers by 2040, although that economy-wide figure is not a measure of jobs humanoid robots can perform.

O-ID says its robots are intended to fit existing factory layouts and meet current industrial safety standards. The announcement does not identify those standards, provide certification details or set out the integration work required for particular tasks. Pricing and production volumes remain undisclosed. In the Tech.eu interview, Jakobsen said O-ID targets an unveiling of its next version at CES 2027 and its first factory pilots in early 2027. Those are company plans, not completed deployments. Tech.eu also describes the current prototype as a stationary dual-arm machine, with mobility and greater strength planned for the next version.

For O-ID, the next meaningful evidence will be a working deployment showing both useful task performance and the promised ease of repair. Swapping a failed part quickly could improve the economics of a robot fleet—but customers will also need to know how often parts fail, what replacements cost and how quickly the machine can safely return to work.