Shifters

Shifters develops AI-native robotic systems for complex ground environments. Its autonomous teams are designed to move through rough terrain and high-risk areas, extending operational reach for defense, emergency response and other missions where human exposure should be reduced.

Market context

Defense robotics builder focused on autonomous ground teams rather than single teleoperated UGVs, with funding and U. S. -Israel footprint in the emerging AI-enabled ground robots layer.

Facts

Website: https://www.shiftersai.com
HQ: Washington, United States
Founded: 2023
Segment: defense robotics
Known funding rounds: 1

Funding

2026-06-03 - Seed - $10.2M - Shifters raises $10.2 million seed round for autonomous ground robot teams - source: finance.yahoo.com

Investors

Ace Capital Partners - Lead - Vc - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-03
Arkin Capital - Participant - Vc - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-03
Aurelius Capital - Participant - Vc - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-03
Corner Ventures - Participant - Vc - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-03
Fresh Fund - Participant - Vc - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-03
STEP - Unmanned Innovation - Participant - Unknown - 1 funding event - first seen 2026-06-03

Ground robotic teams for dangerous defense missions

Shifters develops AI-native ground robotic teams for missions in tunnels, rubble, hazardous areas, and high-risk defense environments.

Target environment: Buildings, tunnels, rubble, industrial facilities, challenging terrain, jammed areas, and high-risk defense environments
Deployment model: Robotic teams for supervised autonomous operation in dangerous ground missions
Customer context: Defense users, security organizations, first responders, infrastructure operators
Workflow context: Reconnaissance, ISR, route exploration, hazardous-area entry, tunnel traversal, infrastructure inspection
Commercial maturity: Seed-stage company with more than $15 million total funding disclosed publicly
Market position: Defense and security ground-robotics builder focused on AI-native team autonomy
Adoption constraints: Field reliability, operator trust, terrain robustness, communications in jammed environments, defense qualification
Adjacent context: Adjacent to UGV builders, quadruped robot developers, defense autonomy software companies, EOD robots.
Source confidence: high

Events

2026-06-15 - Product Launch - Shifters debuts RITA, ARENA and TRUST ground-autonomy stack at Eurosatory - Shifters announced its Eurosatory 2026 debut for an AI-native ground-autonomy product ecosystem. RITA serves as the operator-command layer, ARENA coordinates robotic-team navigation and execution, and TRUST provides the rugged ground robot platform. The compa…
2026-06-03 - Funding - Shifters raises $10.2 million seed round for autonomous ground robot teams - Shifters raised a $10.2 million seed round led by Ace Capital Partners, bringing disclosed total funding to more than $15 million. The company is building autonomous robotic teams for dangerous ground missions in complex and high-risk environments. The fundin…

Team

Ofer Balin - CEO and Co-founder - Leads Shifters as it brings RITA, ARENA and TRUST into field-tested ground autonomy workflows.

Context tags

Autonomous ground vehicles - Peer Group - RITA/ARENA/TRUST are ground robotic team products.
Off-road defence autonomy stack - Peer Group - The product ecosystem supports supervised ground autonomy in dangerous terrain.
Tactical ground robot OEM - Stack Layer - TRUST is a rugged ground robot for dangerous environments.

Shifters canonical Korthos profile