Mbodi will show how it can train a robot using AI agents at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Robots can be programmed to perform a variety of tasks, such as packing boxes and even performing surgery. But each individual movement or task requires its own specific training process, making it difficult for robots to adapt to real-world situations.

the body Aims to make training robots easier and faster with AI agents. The company will showcase this technology as one of the top 20 Startup battlefield finalist TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.

New York-based Embody has developed a cloud-to-edge system, a hybrid computing system using both cloud and local compute, designed to integrate with existing robotic tech stacks. The software relies on many AI agents that communicate with each other to gather information needed to help a robot learn tasks quickly.

Once deployed, Mbodi will collect data and learn from its real-world use cases.

Xavier Chi, co-founder and CEO of Embody, told TechCrunch that users prompt the software using natural language and Embody breaks the request into smaller subtasks. Embody’s cluster of agents essentially divides and conquers the task of gathering information needed to train the robot on prompts.

“Complex things with the physical world, it’s infinite possibilities,” Chi said. “Every time you invent something completely new, you don’t have any data, that’s a problem in the physical world. We always need to have a system where you can orchestrate different models or anyone can modify a robot and tell it to do certain things in certain ways.”

Chi said he and co-founder Sebastian Peralta got the idea for the company while working as engineers at Google. When they weren’t working on robotics, they both realized that advances in AI were moving into the physical world, and that despite the growth of physical AI, there still wasn’t a great way to train robots quickly.

Many companies, like Skilled AI And FieldAIThe world is looking to help train robots faster by building large-scale AI models with enough real-world data to make it easier for them to adapt to new environments. Chee said philosophy just doesn’t work with how constantly the world changes.

Mbodi was launched in 2024 with a focus on picking and packaging. The company won an ABB Robotics AI startup competition last year, which landed them a partnership with the Swiss robotics firm that was Acquired by SoftBank to $5.4 billion in October.

Now the company is working with a Fortune 100 company on a proof-of-concept in consumer and consumer goods.

“For the CPG customer, they have a lot of people, they pack different products of their brand into a tray or a shelf thing, the problem is that it changes every day,” Chee said. “Because of that, it’s impossible to put robots in there. To reprogram these robots, it’s not possible, there’s still a lot of people doing that.”

Mbodi expects to begin deploying more of its software in 2026.

“We want to build something that works, that can actually be deployed,” Chee said. “We’re not a research lab; we don’t want to be a research lab for that matter. We want to produce something that works reliably.”

If you want to hear directly from Mbodi, and watch dozens of additional pitches, attend valuable workshops, and make connections that drive business results, Go here to learn more about this year’s disruptionHeld in San Francisco from October 27 to 29.