Path Robotics raises $300 million at a $2.45 billion valuation, with Navy shipbuilding as its biggest bet

Path Robotics, a Columbus, Ohio, company that builds physical AI for welding robots, has raised $300 million in a Series E at a post-money valuation of $2.45 billion, it said on Nov. 10. Georgian, an AI-focused growth equity firm, led the round, and partner Emily Walsh joins Path's board. Existing investors Addition, Drive Capital, IronArc Ventures, Tiger Global and Yamaha Motor Ventures put in more, and D. E. Shaw Ventures and NAVER Ventures are new. Path says it has raised more than $610 million since it was founded in 2018.

The customer list explains the price better than the welding cells do. Path counts HII, Lockheed Martin and Saronic among its largest customers, and its biggest disclosed deal is a $600 million performance-based production agreement with HII for U.S. Navy shipbuilding. Performance-based is the operative word. At this valuation, investors are paying mostly for Path to pass the Navy's qualification steps, rather than for revenue it has already booked.

The HII money comes in two stages

When HII announced the agreements in August, it said it intends to award up to $900 million of shipbuilding work over seven years to Path and GrayMatter Robotics together, contingent on both companies meeting technology, manufacturing-readiness and performance milestones. First comes a development stage, in which the two companies develop and qualify autonomous welding, grinding, painting and inspection with HII and build them into a production line. HII starts sourcing work through that line only in the second stage. HII plans to outsource more than 2.5 million hours of shipbuilding work in 2026, 30% more than in 2025.

The evidence on the other side is Path's own growth. It says annual recurring revenue grew 17-fold in the past 18 months, its headcount grew 97% in a year and it plans to reach 400 employees by year-end. Its customers also include mid-sized shops such as EK Machine, Millerbernd Manufacturing, TransAmerican Power Products and TYCROP.

Beyond welding, on four legs

The money goes to deployments, to tasks other than welding and to new robot forms, plus more spending on data, compute and model training. Path recently put its welding model, Obsidian, on Rove, a mobile welder built on a quadruped robot. "Our goal isn't to automate one step, but to automate the entire factory," chief executive Andy Lonsberry said.

Path pitches Rove as welding that goes "directly to the part, wherever it is," which is how work arrives in a shipyard. Whether tools like it pass HII's development stage is the question this valuation is waiting on.