OpenAI and Hugging face angels back "highest-ever" Hungarian pre-seed funding round

Hungarian robotics hardware startup Allonic has just closed the largest pre-seed funding round in the country’s history, securing $7.2 million in a financing led by Visionaries Club. The round also saw participation from Day One Capital, alongside angel investors from Hugging Face and OpenAI, signaling strong confidence from both robotics and AI sectors.

Allonic is tackling one of the most stubborn bottlenecks in robotics: how robot bodies are physically manufactured. The current process, the company argues, is antiquated—relying on assembling robotic hands, arms, and manipulators piece by piece using bearings, screws, cables, and delicate joints. This not only drives up costs but also slows down innovation, as each new design requires a labor-intensive rebuild from scratch.

To solve this, Allonic has developed a proprietary manufacturing process called 3D Tissue Braiding. Inspired by how ropes gain strength through their woven structure rather than rigid parts, the startup’s method 3D-weaves robotic “tissues” directly over a skeletal core. Instead of manually assembling hundreds of individual components, Allonic’s tendons, joints, and load-bearing soft tissues are formed together in a single, continuous automated process.

The result, according to the company, is robotic bodies that are simultaneously strong and compliant—capable of delicate manipulation yet robust enough for industrial use—while being far simpler and cheaper to manufacture at scale.

Since unveiling its technology in 2025, Allonic has already completed its first pilot project in electronics manufacturing, demonstrating the practical viability of its approach. The Budapest-based team of 15 is now fielding strong inbound interest from humanoid robotics companies and major consumer tech players, including U.S. big tech firms looking to integrate next-generation hardware into their robotics strategies.

Benedek Tasi, co-founder and CEO of Allonic, framed the breakthrough in broader context: “A lot of attention is on intelligence and software, but hardware still holds many of the hardest problems. The trade-offs between durability and softness, dexterity and strength have always been dictated by the limits of manufacturing. We are removing those constraints and building a platform that allows robotics teams to design, build, and iterate freely, without hardware cost or complexity holding them back. Being able to go from idea to physical robot in minutes instead of weeks fundamentally changes how we can think about robotics design.”

This funding milestone not only cements Allonic’s position as a rising star in European deep tech but also underscores a growing recognition that the next leap in robotics will come as much from smarter manufacturing as from smarter algorithms. If Allonic’s vision materializes, the days of painstakingly hand-assembling robot parts could soon be over—replaced by a seamless, automated weaving process that could accelerate the entire field.

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