Collison brothers invest in home robotics company

Smart home robotics company Matic has become the latest company to get the backing of Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison, after the brothers invested in its most recent round of fundraising.

The company, which claims to have developed the most advanced indoor floor cleaning robot, recently came out of so-called stealth mode to announce a new founding round of $24 million. The company is building an AI-enabled robot that navigates through your home using five RGB cameras to clean like a human.

But the investment in Matic is not the first for the Collison brothers; it isn’t even the first this year. The Stripe founders have been active in the angel investment scene for some time, backing companies across a range of industries from fintech and artificial intelligence to cleantech and robotics.

Earlier this year, the Collisons invested in Rain, a hardware company that develops autonomous drone technology for forest management to help eliminate uncontrolled wildfires, with tools that include controlled burns. The company raised $9.7 million in seed funding in February, valuing the enterprise at almost $27 million. The most recent round was led by DBL Partners, with Patrick and John participating.

Student accommodation: A market plagued by bed shortages, rising rents and 51-week leases

---

An attempt to buy the next election with a giveaway budget would be a gross miscalculation

---

The outlook for interest rate cuts is changing - so should Irish borrowers be worried?

---

IDA gives Intel €30m in aid package

---

The environmental aspect of the investment is in keeping with the brothers’ focus on technologies that can help the environment. Stripe Climate, for example, allows customers of the fintech to invest a small amount of their revenue to help grow emerging carbon removal technologies.

In April, John joined Patrick as a minority angel investor in Terraform Industries, as part of the company’s $6 million seed round. Patrick previously invested in Terraform in 2021, and contributed follow-on investment in the recent seed round. Terraform Industries produces cheap natural gas from sunlight and air, capturing carbon dioxide and using cheap solar power to create hydrogen from water and then combining the two to make synthetic natural gas.

Last year the Collisons invested in Conjecture, an AI research company based in the UK, Polywork, AssemblyAI and Papercup.

Previous investments include Intercom, and autonomous technology company Xwing.