PRINCETON, N.J., Nov. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Sensetics, a next generation haptics and touch data company advancing the digital capture and transmission of realistic touch experiences and bridging the machine and physical worlds by bringing touch to AI, today announced it has raised $1.75mm in pre-seed funding to accelerate product development efforts for its breakthrough hardware and software platform. The majority of the round was funded in the Spring, co-led by MetaVC Partners and Fitz Gate Ventures, with participation from Blue Sky Capital and AIC Ventures.
Sensetics’ platform, featuring its Touch Signature™ programmable fabrics and AI-powered touch capture and editing tools, enable users to record, edit, and replay touch experiences with high fidelity—similar to how we record and reproduce sight and sound. Originating from research at UC Berkeley and Virginia Tech, the technology replicates key mechanoreceptor functions in human fingertips. This allows real-time recording and transmission of tactile data from devices such as robotic arms, surgical tools, wearables, and remote sensors, at human fingertip-level resolution. Durable and low latency, Sensetics supports touch data streaming in a broad array of structured and unstructured environments, creating a new class of physical data for automation and AI control.
Sensetics is pursuing a market opportunity exceeding $10 billion, across sectors where accurate force sensing and haptic feedback are critical. Target industries include transportation and logistics, manufacturing, medical robotics, and VR/AR touch controllers for professional training and simulation. Digitizing touch – a sense as fundamental as sight and sound – will launch an entirely new market for Sensetics, comparable to the digital transformation of video and audio.
The founding team combines top entrepreneurial and academic expertise:
- Adam B. Hopkins, CEO – a veteran in high-tech startups and financial services; previously CEO and founder of Uniformity Labs; recognized inventor and scientific author.
- Rayne Zheng, CTO – Professor at UC Berkeley and Director of the Berkeley Sensors & Actuators Center; published author in Nature and Science on materials, robotics, and AI.
“We see a pivotal moment at the intersection of human-machine interaction and touch technology,” said Hopkins. “Demand for haptic controllers and high resolution tactile sensors is surging in healthcare, industrial, aerospace, defense and robotics applications. Our mission is to make touch the next digital sense and to build a data platform for physical AI comparable in scale and importance to computer vision.”
“We’re excited to back Sensetics as it pioneers the next frontier of human-machine interaction,” said Chris Alliegro, Managing Partner at MetaVC Partners. “Digitizing touch is an extraordinarily complex challenge—one that Sensetics is solving through an elegant application of mechanical metamaterials. By unlocking high-fidelity tactile sensing and feedback, Sensetics is laying the foundation for a new generation of intelligent machines capable of perceiving and responding to the physical world with superhuman sensitivity and precision.”
“Sensetics squarely fits our investment thesis, because it is a deep tech company utilizing proprietary IP to create an entirely new industrial category that targets a massive market opportunity, and it has an outstanding founding team,” said Mark Poag, GP of Fitz Gate Ventures.
About MetaVC Partners
MetaVC Partners is an early-stage venture fund investing in new startup companies using metamaterials for applications in communications, high-performance computing, and imaging and sensing. More information can be found on MetaVC Partners’ website.
About Fitz Gate Ventures
Fitz Gate is an early-stage network-driven venture capital firm with a sub-focus on deep tech/hard tech and is currently investing out of its third fund. Fitz Gate is a generalist fund investing anywhere in the United States and will lead, co-invest with other VCs or invest alone. For more information visit www.fitzgate.com.
About Blue Sky Capital
Blue Sky Capital is a seed stage venture capital firm investing in component technology and hardware, with a focus on electronics, photonics, post-silicon materials, and related manufacturing technologies. We have deep ties to Samtec Electronics, a global manufacturer of electronic interconnects, that gives us a strategic advantage – the ability to leverage partnerships and industry expertise, move quickly, and invest with conviction. For more information, visit blueskycapital.vc.
About AIC Ventures
AIC Ventures is an early-stage investor targeting deep tech applications grounded in academic research. AIC Ventures works closely with Academic Innovation Catalyst (AIC), a philanthropic platform that seeks to unlock innovation for positive impact by providing grant funding and commercialization support to academic innovators and research initiatives. For more information, visit aicventures.org.
About Sensetics
Sensetics is taking human and machine touch interaction into the digital age, providing the hardware and software that enable us to record, edit, and transmit touch in the same way that we do sight and sound. Sensetics Touch Signature™ programmable fabrics, backed by AI-powered touch capture and editing software, grant a user, human or machine, the ability to experience in real time what a remotely operated vehicle, surgical tool, robot, or other user is touching, at the same resolution as the nerve endings in our fingertips. For more information, please visit https://www.senseticscorp.com/ .
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SOURCE Sensetics
