The archive · Hardware & Devices · Product decision · 2025–2026
UMA bets Europe-first: a 40kg humanoid that learns by watching can beat US and China
Ex-Tesla scientist Rémi Cadène's Paris startup UMA is building Northstar, a lightweight humanoid that learns by watching, aimed at European factories first.
UMA (Universal Mechanical Assistant)
What the business is
UMA builds Northstar, a lightweight (~40 kg) humanoid robot for factories and warehouses, designed to learn a new task by watching a human demo instead of being reprogrammed for each application.
How it started
Rémi Cadène spent about three years at Tesla working on the AI behind Autopilot and the Optimus humanoid, then left in early 2024 to become robotics lead at Hugging Face, where he built the open-source LeRobot library. In October 2025 he co-founded UMA in Paris with Pierre Sermanet (ex-Google DeepMind), Simon Alibert (ex-Hugging Face) and hardware designer Rob Knight, betting that Europe — not Silicon Valley — was the right beachhead for humanoids.
What happened
UMA grew to about 30 employees across Paris, London and Switzerland, backed by venture firms Greycroft, Relentless and Unity Growth, with investors including Xavier Niel and Nico Rosberg and Yann LeCun as an adviser. On 6 July 2026 Cadène showed journalists a prototype of Northstar: about 40 kg, initially wheeled with a flexible outer layer, and trained by 'real-time learning' so it can watch a demo, improve with practice and generalize to a new task. He said the company was talking to 50 potential customers and aiming to start industrial pilot programs in logistics and manufacturing later in 2026.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
UMA is a Paris-based startup building Northstar, a lightweight humanoid robot for manufacturing plants, logistics warehouses and eventually homes. Its founder, Rémi Cadène, spent about three years at Tesla working on the AI behind Autopilot and the Optimus humanoid before leading robotics at Hugging Face, where he created the open-source LeRobot library.
Cadène co-founded UMA in October 2025 with Pierre Sermanet (ex-Google DeepMind), Simon Alibert (ex-Hugging Face) and hardware designer Rob Knight. The company's contrarian bet is geographic as much as technical: while Tesla, Figure and China's Unitree define the humanoid race, UMA is targeting Europe first, arguing that high labor costs and an aging workforce will create demand on the continent's own factory floors.
The technical bet is that robots become useful through software, not new actuators: Northstar uses 'real-time learning', so instead of being reprogrammed for every application it watches a human demo, practices and improves — the approach Cadène says mirrors how a child learns to tie shoelaces. At about 40 kg with a flexible outer layer, it is designed to be light enough to work safely beside people.
On 6 July 2026 UMA showed journalists an early prototype at its Paris lab and said it was talking to 50 potential customers about manufacturing and logistics use cases, with industrial pilot programs planned for later in 2026 and a proof-of-concept promised by the end of the year. No robot has shipped yet.
What has to be true
- Cadène's background spans both sides: he built Optimus AI at Tesla, then LeRobot at Hugging Face — the open-source library that passed 12,000 GitHub stars in about a year.
- Europe's demographics — shrinking working-age populations, high labor costs, dense manufacturing — give the continent a demand curve for automation that US and Chinese players are not optimizing for.
- Real-time learning targets the acknowledged bottleneck of humanoids: software that lets machines understand and act in the physical world, not the mechanics of the robot.
- A light, repairable, initially wheeled design lowers the safety and cost barriers that keep humanoids out of real factories, making pilots plausible within a year of founding.
What can be applied
In a hardware race crowded by well-funded giants, the winnable wedge is often the software that makes machines learn — and a beachhead market whose demographics create demand leaders ignore.
Aftermath
As of 8 July 2026 UMA has no shipping product: Northstar exists as an early prototype shown to journalists, with industrial pilot programs planned for later in 2026 and a proof-of-concept promised by year-end. The company employs about 30 people across Paris, London and Switzerland, is backed by Greycroft, Relentless and Unity Growth, and counts Yann LeCun as an adviser. Whether its claimed pipeline of 50 potential customers converts into paid pilots is the open test of the Europe-first bet.
Sources
- Ex-Tesla scientist unveils plans for European humanoid robot
- Ex-Tesla Optimus scientist unveils European humanoid robot startup
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