Sensetics raises $1.75M for development of haptics hardware, software platform

Haptics and touch data startup Sensetics announced it has raised $1.75 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate product development efforts for its hardware and software platform. The company said it is advancing the digital capture and transmission of realistic touch experiences and bridging the machine and physical worlds by bringing touch to AI.

Sensetics said the majority of the round was funded in the Spring, co-led by MetaVC Partners and Fitz Gate Ventures, with participation from Blue Sky Capital and AIC Ventures.

Touch sensing and haptics into the digital age

Sensetics’ platform, featuring its Touch Signature programmable fabrics and AI-powered touch capture and editing tools, enables users to record, edit and replay touch experiences with high fidelity - similar to how humans record and reproduce sight and sound.

Originating from research at UC Berkeley and Virginia Tech, Sensetics said the technology replicates key mechanoreceptor functions in human fingertips. The company said this allows real-time recording and transmission of tactile data from devices such as robotic arms, surgical tools, wearables and remote sensors, at human fingertip-level resolution. Durable and low-latency, Sensetics said it supports touch data streaming in a broad array of structured and unstructured environments, creating a new class of physical data for automation and AI control.

"We see a pivotal moment at the intersection of human-machine interaction and touch technology,” said Adam Hopkins, CEO of Sensetics. “Demand for haptic controllers and high-resolution tactile sensors is surging in healthcare, industrial, aerospace, defense and robotics applications. Our mission is to make touch the next digital sense and to build a data platform for physical AI comparable in scale and importance to computer vision.” 

Hopkins is joined on Sensetics’ founding team by CTO Rayne Zheng, a professor at UC Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Sensors & Actuators Center.

Sensetics said it is pursuing a market opportunity exceeding $10 billion across sectors where accurate force sensing and haptic feedback are critical. Target industries include transportation and logistics, manufacturing, medical robotics, and VR/AR touch controllers for professional training and simulation.

The company said that digitizing touch - a sense as fundamental as sight and sound - will launch an entirely new market, comparable to the digital transformation of video and audio.

“We’re excited to back Sensetics as it pioneers the next frontier of human-machine interaction,” said Chris Alliegro, managing partner at MetaVC Partners. “Digitizing touch is an extraordinarily complex challenge - one that Sensetics is solving through an elegant application of mechanical metamaterials. By unlocking high-fidelity tactile sensing and feedback, Sensetics is laying the foundation for a new generation of intelligent machines capable of perceiving and responding to the physical world with superhuman sensitivity and precision.”