Physical AI startup TacnIQ.ai has secured $1.5 million from In Group Holdings as part of a planned $3 million pre-seed financing round. The Singapore- and California-based company will use the capital to develop tactile AI foundation models, expand its engineering team, and scale commercial deployments across industries where machines interact directly with physical environments. The funding supports TacnIQ.ai's broader effort to give robots and other machines the ability to interpret and respond to signals generated through physical contact.
Building AI for Physical Interaction
TacnIQ.ai is developing artificial intelligence systems designed to process tactile information gathered from sensor-based data collection nodes. Its technology is intended to help machines understand physical interactions in real-world settings, extending AI capabilities beyond visual, audio, and text-based inputs. The company is targeting applications in sectors including logistics, construction, e-commerce, hospitality, and healthcare, where physical contact and environmental feedback can influence machine performance.
TacnIQ.ai says its systems are already being used by paying customers, including deployments focused on workplace safety and ergonomics. These commercial deployments serve a dual purpose by addressing operational requirements while generating real-world sensor data that can be used to train and refine the company's AI models. By collecting data under different industrial conditions, TacnIQ.ai aims to build models capable of adapting to a wider range of physical tasks.
Expanding a Proprietary Tactile Dataset
The company has accumulated more than 5,000 hours of tactile interactions from controlled experiments and field deployments, according to TacnIQ.ai. Its dataset covers multiple industries, tasks, and operating environments, distinguishing its approach from systems trained primarily on laboratory data or developed for narrowly defined applications. TacnIQ.ai is also creating additional sensor nodes that can capture a broader variety of physical signals and expand the multimodal information available for model development.
The company believes this broader training approach could allow its tactile models to generalize across different physical environments rather than requiring extensive application-specific retraining. Such capabilities could become increasingly relevant as robots, industrial equipment, and other intelligent machines are expected to operate more autonomously in unpredictable real-world conditions. TacnIQ.ai is positioning tactile intelligence as another layer of machine perception that can complement existing vision and sensing technologies.
Funding Supports Engineering and Deployment
In Group Holdings is the lead investor behind the $1.5 million investment, which forms part of TacnIQ.ai's larger $3 million pre-seed round. Co-founder and CEO Aashish Mehta said the financing represents an important step toward hiring additional engineers, developing more advanced tactile models, and transforming the technology into scalable commercial applications. The company is currently expanding across areas including artificial intelligence, software engineering, and business development.
In Group Holdings CEO Liu Song described physical AI as an emerging area of artificial intelligence and highlighted TacnIQ.ai's combination of proprietary tactile data and active commercial deployments. The investment comes as interest grows in AI systems capable of interacting more directly with machines, robots, and physical infrastructure. TacnIQ.ai's strategy centers on gathering proprietary real-world data while simultaneously validating its technology through commercial use cases.
Collaboration With Synaptics
TacnIQ.ai is also working with semiconductor and interface technology company Synaptics to help move tactile AI from research environments toward commercial implementation. Synaptics develops touch, display, and related interface technologies, while TacnIQ.ai provides AI models designed to interpret the physical signals generated through sensors and machine interactions. The collaboration is focused on creating systems capable of processing complex tactile information reliably and in real time.
Mahesh Srinivasan, vice president and general manager of Touch & Display at Synaptics, said physical AI systems require dependable interpretation of complex signals before they can be broadly deployed outside laboratories. TacnIQ.ai's technology is designed to bridge that gap by combining sensor hardware, proprietary datasets, and artificial intelligence models into systems suited for practical industry applications. The partnership could also provide TacnIQ.ai with additional opportunities to integrate its software with established hardware technologies.
With its latest financing, TacnIQ.ai plans to accelerate development of its tactile foundation models while increasing the number of commercial environments in which its technology is deployed. The company's growing dataset and industry deployments provide the foundation for its effort to build AI systems capable of understandi