Not science fiction anymore: mail.ru’s Dmitry Grishin launches $25M robotics fund

June 17, 2012 | Source: Forbes
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(Credit: 20th Century Fox)

Robotic technology is close to reaching a new phase of mainstream consumer adoption. That’s the theory behind a new $25 million fund from Dmitry Grishin, the co-founder and CEO of Russia Internet giant Mail.Ru.

The fund will invest globally in areas such as home maintenance, healthcare, education, entertainment — basically any mass consumer market.

The robotics industry now is where the personal computing industry was in the 1980s: ripe for mainstream adoption and poised for massive growth, Grishin says. Technology has advanced to make production of robotics much cheaper now. While it took perhaps $100,000 to build a robot 30 years ago, now it can be built for a fraction of that cost, he says, pointing to things like smartphone technology, 3d scanners and Microsoft’s Kinect platform.