Author: Nancy, PANews
Andrew Kang, a star investor once active in the crypto market, is shifting his focus to the AI and robotics sectors. On May 20, Andrew Kang announced his official appointment as CEO of RoboStrategy, responsible for the company's strategic direction and investment portfolio management.
As an innovative fund inspired by the capital model of the crypto DAT company Strategy, RoboStrategy recently officially launched on Nasdaq and secured up to $20 billion in equity financing commitments, quickly drawing market attention.
From Crypto to Robotics, Already Invested in Star Companies Like Figure
RoboStrategy is a public closed-end fund focused on robotics and embodied AI, co-founded by Andrew Kang and Marc Weinstein in 2025. Its goal is to open up early-stage robotics investment opportunities, previously accessible only to a few institutional investors, to a broader base of ordinary investors.
Andrew Kang and Marc Weinstein are also co-founders of the crypto investment firm Mechanism Capital. Since its establishment in 2020, Mechanism Capital has invested in over a hundred crypto projects, including well-known protocols and platforms such as Arbitrum, Pendle, Near, Deribit, and 1inch. However, based on public information, Mechanism Capital has rarely disclosed new crypto investment activities since October 2025. Andrew Kang recently admitted that he has not been closely following the crypto market for the past few months.
In contrast, he has been dedicating more effort to the robotics field. According to Andrew Kang, he began researching the robotics industry two years ago, but at that time, most VCs advised against entering this sector. In the market environment back then, robotics companies generally faced fundraising difficulties. The industry lacked mature, large-scale success stories, and there were many doubts from the outside world regarding their commercialization paths, technology implementation capabilities, and potential market size.
In his view, however, the acceleration of embodied AI development will completely transform the entire industry. Humanoid robots are one of the few directions with the potential to go "from zero to a multi-trillion dollar market," similar to the developmental stage of Bitcoin in 2013, but with a larger long-term market space. Particularly as manufacturing, logistics, and service industries continue to face labor shortages, embodied AI and robotics technologies are accelerating their entry into real industrial scenarios.
Therefore, in February 2024, Andrew Kang completed his first significant investment in robotics, investing $19 million in Figure AI. Today, Figure AI has become one of the world's highest-valued humanoid robotics companies, with a latest valuation of $39 billion, compared to its pre-money valuation of approximately $2 billion in February 2024. (Related reading:The Entrepreneur from the Farm: After Building Flying Cars, Gambles on a $39 Billion Giant in the Robotics Sector)
However, Andrew Kang also realized that the future development of the robotics industry will heavily rely on massive long-term capital, which is difficult to sustain through individuals or traditional funds alone. Meanwhile, robotics startups also need a long-term capital platform that truly understands industry demands to help them secure continuous financing, industrial resources, and market recognition support. More importantly, current robotics innovation is mainly concentrated in the private market, making it difficult for most ordinary investors to participate.
Based on this, Andrew Kang co-founded RoboStrategy. Currently, RoboStrategy has invested in robotics companies including Figure AI, Apptronik, Dyna Robotics, Dexmate, Standard Bots, and Path Robotics, covering multiple areas from hardware and infrastructure to software, with an average investment size per round of approximately $7 million.
In Andrew Kang's view, compared to traditional VCs, RoboStrategy possesses several differentiated advantages. First, as a closed-end fund, its capital is permanent, free from the fund term limitations of traditional VCs, allowing it to adopt an extremely long-term perspective in deploying in the robotics and embodied AI industry. Second, the team brings together multiple seasoned professionals from the robotics industry, including long-time founders or operators, making it regarded by many startups as one of the "most professional and knowledgeable investment institutions in the robotics industry." Additionally, leveraging the team's strengths in digital marketing and social media, RoboStrategy not only has stronger fund distribution capabilities but is also more adept at expanding market influence and industry awareness, thereby helping its portfolio companies gain more attention, talent, and resources.
Launched on Nasdaq, Attempting to Replicate the Strategy Capital Flywheel
As the first closed-end fund specifically designed for public market investors, RoboStrategy officially began trading on Nasdaq on May 11, under the ticker symbol "BOT." As of now, the BOT stock price is around $28.2, having declined approximately 21.58% since listing.
Public information shows that RoboStrategy board member Jason Zhao purchased 400,000 shares of the company at $10 per share in October last year; subsequently, Andrew Kang also purchased 246,000 shares at the same price. Meanwhile, the investment advisory firm FP Strategies LLC continued to increase its holdings by 290,000 shares at $10 per share in April this year, currently holding a cumulative total of approximately 390,000 shares.
In terms of capital operation logic, RoboStrategy draws inspiration from Strategy's Bitcoin treasury model. The latter continuously issues stocks and convertible bonds in the public capital market to obtain low-cost funds for consistently increasing its Bitcoin holdings, leveraging stock price premiums to form a capital flywheel. This model has been emulated by numerous companies.
RoboStrategy attempts to replicate this logic in the robotics sector. The fund's core idea is to use three main financing instruments—CEF, PIPE, and ATM—to continuously raise funds when the fund's stock price trades at a premium relative to its Net Asset Value (NAV), then deploy that capital into high-growth private robotics and embodied AI companies, thereby constructing the R.I.S.E capital compound interest flywheel.
The so-called R.I.S.E represents four stages:
· Raise: Issue shares at a premium when the market price is above NAV to obtain more cash.
· Invest: Through deep due diligence, allocate funds to high-conviction robotics projects.
· Scale: Portfolio companies use the new capital to accelerate expansion, driving fund NAV growth.
· Expand: As NAV increases and industry enthusiasm rises, further attract investors and new capital, expanding the fund's scale and influence.
This model essentially utilizes the dual pricing mechanism of closed-end funds (market price vs. net asset value), aiming to achieve compound growth in NAV per share over the long term, while replacing the multi-layered fee structure of traditional private equity funds with a single public fund structure.
Earlier this month, RoboStrategy signed a $20 billion Committed Equity Financing (CEF) agreement with Roth Principal Investments, a subsidiary of Roth Capital Partners, to support its strategic growth plans.
However, just as most crypto DAT companies' treasury stories are difficult to sustain, RoboStrategy also faces risks that cannot be ignored.
As of March 31, 2026, RoboStrategy's NAV was approximately $7.31 per share, with total net assets around $145.5 million. Based on the current stock price, the market's valuation premium for it is close to 3 times. But a high premium does not mean discount risk will not materialize. Meanwhile, since the fund's investment targets are mostly unlisted robotics companies, their asset valuations themselves are highly subjective and have limited liquidity. Exit paths heavily rely on IPO or M&A markets. Once the capital environment cools down, these assets may face valuation adjustment pressure.
Furthermore, the closed-end fund structure means investors cannot redeem shares at any time like with open-end funds; they can only trade on the secondary market. Therefore, price volatility is often amplified.
Whether RoboStrategy can sustain its high premium and market enthusiasm in the long term remains to be verified by the market.
