Human as API for robots — the teleoperation layer for robot deployments
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States | Founded: 2026 | Employees: 6 | Stage: Seed (Y Combinator S26) | Website: https://aktoria.com
Aktoria Robotics, founded in 2026 in San Francisco by Carnegie Mellon researchers Jaskaran Singh Walia and Shreenabh Agrawal, sells the human part of robot work. The product has three pieces: remote-control software, which the company says steers a robot from another country with around 30 milliseconds of delay and under 8 milliseconds nearby; an operations centre of trained human operators covering 24 hours a day across the United States, Mexico and India; and training data, meaning recordings of real robots doing real tasks that robot makers use to teach their machines. The pitch is simple — instead of hiring and managing your own remote operators, rent Aktoria's for less than half the cost. The company says it raised $500,000 from Y Combinator in July 2026.
Most 'autonomous' robots in use today still have a person behind them, and Aktoria sells that person as a service. Robotics companies plug in and get fast remote-control software, a 24-hour team of trained operators across three countries, and the training data those operators produce — for at least half the cost of an in-house team. The clever part is that the same hours keeping a robot working also generate the recordings needed to eventually make it work alone. The risk is structural: this is a people business, and as robots improve, the human layer shrinks.
Browse: Home | Blog | About | All Startups A-Z | View full profile on StartupWiki