Pentagon Eyes Billion-Dollar Robot Startup as US-China Race Intensifies

The Pentagon phoned Evan Beard at 7:30 p.m. on a Friday this summer to ask whether his company's robotic arms could launch drones from autonomous boats. Beard, CEO of the robotics startup Standard Bots, walked out of a Long Island country club dinner to take the call. "They were like, 'We want to get robots to Iran really quickly,'" Beard told Business Insider. Standard Bots has no Defense Department contract, and its robots are not being used in Iran — but the call signals how much Washington now wants what he is building.

A decade after teaching himself hardware in a cramped Manhattan apartment, Beard, just shy of 40, runs a company valued at $1 billion. Its investors include RoboStrategy, General Catalyst and Amazon; its customers range from mom-and-pop shops to Amazon, Lockheed Martin and NASA. Two venture firms have offered to lead his next funding round, according to Beard, who has accepted neither.

How big is the money flowing into robotics?

Robotics and physical AI companies raised $33.4 billion globally in the first half of this year, per PitchBook data — already surpassing the $28.7 billion raised in all of 2025 and up from just under $5 billion in 2020. That is roughly a sevenfold increase in five years, and Beard argues the boom is inseparable from geopolitics. He believes the next global power contest will be fought with robots as much as with AI chips and drones, and says the US is already behind. Chinese companies Unitree and AgiBot shipped 71% of the world's humanoid robots last year, according to Omdia, and Stanford's 2026 Emerging Technology Review found most US companies rely on Chinese suppliers for components or assembly.

Beard has turned that gap into a lobbying campaign. In two congressional appearances, he has called for federal loans to help manufacturers adopt robotics and trade barriers against state-subsidized Chinese competitors. He also lobbied for the restrictions the Federal Communications Commission imposed this summer on new models of foreign-made advanced robots. At a private meeting this summer, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned executives from SpaceX, Boston Dynamics and Standard Bots of an approaching robotic arms race, per notes reviewed by Politico. "We need to make sure they're produced in America," Lutnick said.

Can a newcomer beat FANUC and Universal Robots?

Beard's stated goal — the world's largest robot manufacturer, building everything in the US within a decade — runs straight at decades-old incumbents. FANUC, based in Japan, shipped its one-millionth industrial robot in 2023. Universal Robots of Denmark says it has sold more than 100,000 collaborative robots worldwide.

Beard dismisses them. "They're nothingburgers," he said. "They're shipping so few robots, and their software is not very good." George Chowdhury, a robotics analyst at ABI Research, disagrees: "FANUC is very highly regarded, as is Universal Robots. To break into those markets is going to be really hard. They're going to have to beat them on cost and performance."

Standard Bots' midsize arm starts at $39,500, against more than $50,000 for a similarly sized Universal Robots model. Chinese suppliers undercut both by a wide margin. Beard says he is not chasing incumbents' customers but targeting manufacturers that have never used robots, betting that AI-assisted "vibe coding" will let ordinary workers program arms without specialists. FANUC has demonstrated a system turning spoken instructions into robot code; Universal Robots and ABB have introduced similar simplification tools.

What is not disclosed — and what Washington might pay

Beard would not disclose customer counts, annual revenue or production numbers. He expects Standard Bots to produce 4,000 robots a year by the end of 2027 — roughly 10% of annual US industrial robot installations — and puts the Glen Cove, Long Island factory's capacity at 20,000 arms, without saying when that level would be reached. The company sources only about 40% of its parts domestically by value, because American alternatives can cost three to ten times more, Beard said. It does not yet use many of its own robots on its production line.

The Washington bet may pay off. The Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital is negotiating a potential multi-billion-dollar loan for Standard Bots, according to two people familiar with the matter; the department did not respond to requests for comment. Michelle Sun, a robotics analyst and author of the Substack Core Matter, sees a viable path only if government demand and AI-driven manufacturing efficiency align: "We can't brute force our way to manufacturing in the US. The way to unlock it is to figure out how to leapfrog other countries using AI."

From viral app to robot lobbyist

Beard sold three startups before robotics: one to Salesforce after Y Combinator in 2010, another to Spirent by 2014, and a third, the media company A Plus, co-founded with Ashton Kutcher. "Evan's speed to act is very quick," Kutcher said. "He takes the medicine and moves on." By 2024, Standard Bots had three customers and was nearly out of money; more than 70 investors turned Beard down before Lachy Groom, an early Stripe employee and Physical Intelligence co-founder, invested — he says he decided within five minutes. "My impression of Evan was, 'Holy shit, this is one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life," Groom said.

The company name itself is a claim to ambition: a nod to rivaling Standard Oil's influence. "We're going to have raw materials coming, and robots going out," Beard said on a factory tour. "Henry Ford-style." Whether the Pentagon loan materializes may decide whether that ambition scales — or stalls.