Most industrial robots still need a human to teach them every movement, point by point. Tokyo-based Mujin built a controller that lets robots work out their own motions in real time, and it now runs picking, palletizing and truck-unloading lines in warehouses and factories in Japan, China, the United States and Europe. In late 2025 the company closed a US$233 million Series D, lifting its valuation above US$1 billion.
Why “teaching” is the bottleneck
A conventional industrial arm is programmed with a teach pendant: an engineer moves the robot to each position, records it, and repeats the process whenever the product, box size or layout changes. That works on a car assembly line that builds the same part for years. It breaks down in a distribution centre, where thousands of different items arrive in random order and box sizes change every day.
Japan feels this problem more sharply than most countries. The logistics sector has been short of drivers and warehouse staff for years, and the 2024 cap on truck drivers’ overtime hours added more pressure to load and unload faster. Warehouses need automation that copes with variety, not just volume.
What Mujin builds
Mujin was founded in 2011 by Issei Takino and Rosen Diankov. Diankov is the author of OpenRAVE, an open-source motion-planning framework he developed during his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University. The company’s core idea is to replace hand-taught paths with software that plans motions on the fly.
- MujinController — a controller that sits on top of robots from major makers such as FANUC, Yaskawa and Kawasaki, and computes collision-free paths in real time
- 3D vision — cameras and recognition software identify the position and shape of boxes or items, including mixed and unknown products
- MujinOS — a no-code platform that coordinates robots, automated guided vehicles, storage systems and sensors inside a real-time digital twin
Because the system is maker-agnostic, a customer can keep the robot brands it already uses and add Mujin as the “brain” on top.
Typical applications
| Application | What the robot does | Why teaching-less matters |
|---|---|---|
| Depalletizing | Takes mixed cases off an incoming pallet | Box sizes and stacking patterns differ on every pallet |
| Palletizing | Builds stable outbound pallets from mixed cases | The stacking plan has to be calculated per order |
| Piece picking | Picks individual items from totes for e-commerce orders | Tens of thousands of SKUs cannot be taught one by one |
| Truck unloading | Empties floor-loaded containers and trailers | Cartons shift during transport, so no two loads look the same |
From pilot lines to a unicorn
Mujin’s early reference projects included a highly automated distribution centre for China’s JD.com and work for large Japanese retailers and wholesalers. Over the past decade it has moved from single robot cells to whole-warehouse systems, where MujinOS coordinates many machines at once.
In December 2025 the company announced the first close of its Series D: US$133 million in equity and US$100 million in debt. NTT Group led the round, with the Qatar Investment Authority as co-lead and participation from Salesforce Ventures and Mitsubishi HC Capital Realty. Reports put total funding at more than US$400 million and the valuation above US$1 billion. Management has said it is looking at a public listing around 2030, with New York as one option.
Why it matters for overseas partners
- Logistics operators and 3PLs — Mujin targets the hardest-to-automate tasks (mixed cases, unloading), which are also where labour shortages hit first in the US and Europe
- Manufacturers — reshoring in the US and Europe is creating demand for flexible factory automation that does not depend on scarce robot programmers
- System integrators — because the platform works with existing robot brands, integrators can add Mujin without replacing installed hardware
- Investors — Mujin is one of a small number of Japanese robotics software companies with a unicorn valuation and a stated IPO path
Outlook
Japan is known for building robot hardware. Mujin is betting that the next layer of value lies in the software that tells those robots what to do without a human teaching each step. If MujinOS becomes a common operating layer across warehouses and factories, the company could play a role in industrial automation similar to the one operating systems play in computing.
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