Icarus Robotics Raises $6.1 Million to Power Space Warehouses with AI Robots

Icarus Robotics, a deeptech company building the Labor Force For Space, led by Ethan Barajas and Jamie Palmer, has secured $6.1 million seed round led by Soma Capital and Xtal, with participation from Nebular and Massive Tech Ventures.

Icarus Robotics cofounders Ethan Barajas and Jamie Palmer interviewed astronauts to better understand life in orbit and discovered a surprising truth: much of their time wasn’t spent on science, but on logistics. As one astronaut put it, “We’re Amazon warehouse workers with PhDs.” Even a two-hour experiment could require ninety minutes of cargo handling and tool prep before the research began.

Every 60 days, the International Space Station receives about three-and-a-half tons of cargo, all of which must be unpacked and stowed, a time-consuming task for astronauts. Seeing the inefficiency, Entrepreneurs First alumni Ethan Barajas and Jamie Palmer founded Icarus Robotics with a clear solution: deploy intelligent, dexterous robots to handle the workload. Rather than diving straight into humanoid machines, Icarus is starting iteratively, beginning with a fan-propelled robot equipped with two robotic arms and jaw grippers to manage these repetitive chores.

The design of Icarus Robotics’ first machine is shaped entirely by its mission: unpacking and stowing cargo. Cofounder Jamie Palmer, the robotics lead, explained that bimanual manipulation, coordinated use of two robotic arms, can achieve about 80% of the required dexterity using simple jaw grippers, without the complexity of fully anthropomorphic hands.

Many ISS science experiments are surprisingly straightforward in execution, often involving routine tasks like swapping cartridges, precisely the kind of repetitive work where a robotic labor force could provide significant value.

Icarus Robotics is moving quickly toward real-world validation. The next milestone is flight testing: a parabolic-flight campaign slated for early next year, followed by a year-long ISS demonstration arranged through Voyager Space, which operates the Bishop airlock. The goal is to spend that year proving out the entire cargo bag workflow before moving on to more delicate station upkeep tasks, like filter and seal inspections, that could further reduce astronaut workload.

Icarus envisions building “embodied AI” for space robotics, training robots in microgravity with humans in the loop, then progressing to partial autonomy with high-level commands like “open the bag.” The ultimate goal: fully autonomous robots to support human missions in deep space, where teleoperation isn’t possible.