Enigma emerges from stealth with $70M to design robot controls that feel as natural as turning a volume knob

Enigma, a research-focused robotics startup backed by $70 million in seed funding, is pursuing an unconventional bet: that the biggest barrier to practical robots isn't raw AI capability—it's how we communicate with them. Rather than simply chasing more powerful foundation models, the newly public company is running a large-scale human experiment to discover what robot control actually feels natural.

The novel approach#

While competitors in AI robotics focus on training foundation models through video, simulation, or human motion capture, Enigma is flipping the question. Co-founder Jonathan Jacobi, formerly Microsoft's youngest employee, argues that robots fail not because they lack intelligence but because people give up explaining what they want. Spending 15 minutes instructing a robot where to place dishes defeats the purpose; most users would just do it themselves instead.

The breakthrough, Jacobi believes, comes from studying real human preference. His team is launching an online experiment where people worldwide can remotely operate over 100 proprietary AI robots housed in Israel and California. These systems can draw with paintbrushes, engage in sword combat, and conduct simple chemistry by manipulating flasks—all tasks the company built from scratch, including both the robotic hardware and underlying models.

What the data could reveal#

Through testing different interaction modes—voice commands, text, video demonstrations, or gesture-based control—Enigma hopes to identify the robotics equivalent of a car volume knob. That intuitive dial works because users get immediate feedback and don't need to guess percentages; they turn it until the sound is right. The startup wants to find the interaction method that achieves similar effortlessness with robots.

The pair of co-founders—Jacobi and longtime collaborator Gal Niv—assembled their team from Israel's elite tech and research circles, recruiting alumni from leading AI labs, mathematics competition winners, and even researchers pulled from PhD programs. Neither founder had deep robotics experience, which Index Ventures partner Shardul Shah frames as a strength: their outsider perspective allows them to skip past industry conventions and question what robot interaction should fundamentally feel like.

Early partnerships and open questions#

Enigma has already begun working with partners in healthcare, logistics, and entertainment, though the company is withholding specific use cases. The public experiment remains deliberately exploratory—the founders acknowledge they don't yet know whether robots should be controlled via conversation, visual demonstration, or manual manipulation, or some combination entirely.