Why we invested in Allonic
Allonic raised $7.2M from Visionaries Club and Day One Capital
The bottleneck in Robotics
Most people riding the AI wave believe the missing piece in robotics is intelligence. Build a smarter brain, and the rest will follow. We think it’s only one piece of the puzzle.
Robotic intelligence is being solved at extraordinary speed. Foundation models are learning to manipulate objects, humanoid prototypes are walking through warehouses, and billion-dollar bets are being placed on general-purpose machines. The brain is catching up fast. But the body isn’t.
The real bottleneck that almost nobody is talking about is dexterity. More specifically: the ability to manufacture it.
Today, building an advanced robotic hand or arm still looks a lot like it did a decade ago. Hundreds of precision parts painstakingly assembled by hand. It’s slow, expensive, and brutally hard to scale. Every incremental improvement in dexterity adds exponential mechanical complexity. You can have the smartest AI in the world, but if it’s trapped in a clumsy body that costs a fortune and takes weeks to build, it doesn’t matter.
This is the gap Allonic is closing.
The Allonic way
Founded in Hungary, Allonic has developed a 3D Tissue Braiding platform that weaves robotic “tissues” directly over a skeletal core in a single automated process. Think of how a rope gets its strength from structure, not rigid material. Allonic applies the same principle to build bio-inspired robotic bodies that are strong, compliant, and safe, at a fraction of the time and cost.
It’s not just a fabrication method, it’s a full platform. Users configure designs and the software translates them into production code, like slicing in 3D printing. Multiple materials like elastics, wiring, sensors can get embedded during production. From digital design to physical limb, no complicated supply chains required. Robotic end effectors can be swapped as easily as disposable gloves.
The round
The $7.2M pre-seed round - the largest ever completed in Hungary - was led by Visionaries Club, with participation from us at Day One Capital, alongside Prototype, SDAC Ventures, RoboStrategy and TinyVC. The round also includes more than a dozen angel investors from leading companies including OpenAI and Hugging Face, as well as top researchers from institutions like ETH Zurich and Northwestern University.
The ASML of Robotics
There’s an emerging argument that NVIDIA will be the ASML of robotics. The one indispensable supplier everyone depends on. We think that’s a half-truth. It assumes the bottleneck stays in software and compute. As we’ve argued, it won’t.
We envision a future where Allonic becomes the true ASML of robotics. Just as ASML became the backbone of the semiconductor industry by providing the lithography machines every chipmaker depends on, Allonic has the potential to occupy the same position, supplying the tissue braiding machines that enable the entire ecosystem to build better, cheaper, and faster. It’s not about building one robot. It’s about building the manufacturing infrastructure that makes all robots possible.
The robotics industry is at a tipping point. The AI is ready. The demand is there. What’s missing is the physical infrastructure to match. Allonic is the manufacturing layer that will make the next generation of robots possible.
Day1 mission
Something extraordinary is happening in CEE. A new generation of deeply technical founders is emerging from the region, tackling problems at the frontier of physics, materials science, and engineering, not just pure software. Allonic is a prime example, and we’re seeing more like them every month. At Day One, we’re here to back them.