Why We Invested in Dyna: Building the Foundation for General-Purpose Robots
When Lindon Gao and Jason Ma founded Dyna in 2024, their vision was ambitious. They aimed to tackle one of the most challenging problems in technology: creating robots capable of handling the complexities and unpredictability of the real world. In less than a year, their team developed DYNA-1, a robotics foundation model that demonstrated over 99% success during continuous 24-hour operation. What makes this achievement remarkable is that these results were not from controlled laboratory conditions but from real-world applications. DYNA-1 robots were folding napkins, packing cups, portioning food, and managing shifts in restaurants, laundromats, gyms, and hotels.
The model’s success went beyond mere functionality. It showed an impressive ability to generalize. When deployed in new environments, the robots operated effectively right out of the box without requiring additional training. This capacity to adapt and perform in diverse, unpredictable settings is a key factor that distinguishes Dyna from other robotics companies.
The Technology Behind Dyna’s Success
Dyna’s unique strength lies in its vertically integrated technology stack. This system combines a reward-model control system with real-time uncertainty forecasting and continual self-play learning. Each robot continuously streams new data back to the cloud, enabling the model to improve overnight. As a result, the entire fleet of robots becomes more capable every day. This approach ensures that the system is hardware-agnostic today, meaning it can work with various robotic hardware, and it is designed to be margin-accretive in the future. Dyna has a clear roadmap to develop affordable in-house robotic arms, which will help achieve software-class economics in robotics.
The company’s progress is not only about technology but also about the exceptional team behind it. Lindon Gao brings valuable experience, having previously built and sold Caper AI to Instacart for $350 million. His track record shows his ability to transform cutting-edge AI into successful commercial products. Jason Ma’s background includes years of robotics research at DeepMind and NVIDIA. Alongside co-founder York Yang and a world-class engineering team, they are executing their vision with remarkable speed and precision.
Why We Invested in Dyna and Their Vision for the Future
At Samsung Next, we envision a future where multi-purpose, in-home robots become as common as smartphones. For this vision to become a reality, robots must succeed in cluttered, unpredictable environments filled with dynamic human behavior. These are precisely the challenges that Dyna’s systems are addressing today in commercial kitchens, laundries, and other real-world settings.
This is why we are excited to participate in Dyna’s $120 million Series A funding round. Alongside investors such as Robostrategy, CRV, and First Round Capital, we are joined by Salesforce Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, and LG Technology Ventures. It is rare to see a robotics company demonstrate both a technical breakthrough and commercial traction at such an early stage.
Dyna is already laying the groundwork for physical artificial general intelligence (AGI). Their rapid progress shows that this is not just a distant vision but a reality unfolding now. We look forward to supporting Dyna as they continue to build the future of general-purpose robotics.
Niko Ciminelli is an investor at Samsung Next. Samsung Next’s investment strategy reflects its own views and does not represent the vision or strategy of any other Samsung business unit, including Samsung Electronics.
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