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New startup ideas · Physical world · Robotics and physical world

startup idea

Dutycycle

Metering, billing and SLA API for companies selling robots by the unit of work.

Dutycycle is an API that robot vendors call to turn machine telemetry into money: it meters completed work units (picks, square meters, inspection hours), applies the contract's rate card and uptime credits, issues the invoice, and exposes a signed utilization record their customers and lenders can audit.

3/5

venture judge

14

similar startups, last 2 years (43 all-time)

96%

of 3 nearest real companies still alive

yes

8 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Scorecard

One score that balances how trendy the idea is, the demand for it and its potential for 100x, with competition measured relative to every other idea in the catalog. Recent startup trends first, government priorities second.

61

Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 37.2 x 1.64

Crowded

competition: more crowded than 81% of ideas · headwind x0.59

+3.7

government priorities, secondary (36 matching grants)

Trend

84

Is the wave forming now? 2025-26 entrants vs 2023-24, rounds since 2025, the sector's live-batch direction, the 2026 trend analyst.

  • Entrants 2025-26 vs 2023-24 (similar companies)95
  • Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector25
  • Rounds announced 2025+ matching the idea100
  • Sector direction (live batch)100
  • 2026 trend analyst100

Demand

60

Does anyone want it? YC's current RFS, companies already paid for something similar, the operator judge, founders' yes-rate in decks, readers who would run the test.

  • YC asks for it (current RFS: idea / sector)30
  • Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)100
  • Operator judge: real pain50

100x potential

36

Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.

  • Venture judge50
  • Market size axis33
  • Moat axis20
  • Neighbours still alive36
  • Technologist judge25

Score = 100 x cbrt(Trend x Demand x 100x) x (1 - 0.5 x crowding) + government bonus (max 5), calibrated so the 95th-percentile idea scores 90 (order never changes). A geometric mean: a weak pillar cannot be papered over. Percentiles are among the 272 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were metering, billing, sla, selling, robots, unit, robot, vendors.

The idea in full

What
Dutycycle is an API that robot vendors call to turn machine telemetry into money: it meters completed work units (picks, square meters, inspection hours), applies the contract's rate card and uptime credits, issues the invoice, and exposes a signed utilization record their customers and lenders can audit. It ships with connectors to common fleet stacks so a vendor can bill outcome-based contracts in weeks instead of building an internal metering team. Priced as a percentage of billed volume, distributed through robot OEMs and integrators in the US.
Why now
Robots-as-a-service financing is where the money is going right now: Moove raised $250M in August 2026 to be the backbone of the robotaxi industry and Pacific is mass-producing and financing micro data centers, while Manifold ships deployment-ready robotic labor for warehouses; all of them bill by usage and all of them are writing the metering layer themselves. Ember Robotics died in 2024 building Datadog for robots because observability was a cost center, whereas metering sits on the invoice.
Wedge: first customer and entry point
Seed and Series A warehouse robot vendors with 5 to 50 deployed units who are invoicing from spreadsheets: start with pick-count metering and monthly invoice generation for one customer contract type.
Path to 100x
Metering and billing infrastructure for outcome-priced physical automation is a $1-10B take-rate market that grows with every robot hour billed, and because the utilization record is what lenders underwrite, financing and insurance products can be built on top of it, making Dutycycle a platform rather than a billing tool. There is no moat on day one, which is why it must reach the integrator channel before an incumbent billing vendor adds a robotics connector.
Ceiling
A generic usage-billing vendor adds robot connectors and Dutycycle's percentage take collapses to a flat per-event fee.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
Agency Tool Company sells infrastructure to build, deploy and manage real-world robots and Osseus is a robotics development platform; both serve engineering, Dutycycle serves the revenue side of the same fleet. Ember Robotics proved the monitoring-only version of this does not pay.
Main risk
Every robot vendor considers billing core and keeps it in house, leaving Dutycycle with only the smallest fleets.

Five judges

Each judge scores every idea in the catalog with a named rubric; the venture judge decides whether a card is shown at all (4-5 is venture-grade).

  • Venture investor

    3/5

    Sitting on the invoice and the lender-underwritten utilization record is the right wedge, but vendors keep billing in house and no moat exists yet.

  • Bootstrapper

    4/5

    Revenue within a year taking a percentage of invoices that warehouse robot vendors currently produce from spreadsheets.

  • Operator

    3/5

    Vendors invoicing 5 to 50 units from spreadsheets feel it, but most robot companies treat billing as core and keep it in house.

  • Technologist

    2/5

    Turning pick counts into invoices is connector work with no moat on day one, and a generic usage-billing vendor adds a robotics connector in a sprint.

  • Risk

    2/5

    No moat, percentage of billed volume from seed-stage vendors with 5 to 50 units who mostly consider billing core.

  • trends

    5/5

    Tempo's March 2026 Machine Payments Protocol plus robotics jumping to 13% of YC S26 makes per-work-unit robot billing sellable exactly now, not in 2023.

Similar startups in the directory

Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (metering, billing, sla, selling, robots, unit, robot, vendors): 43 all-time, 14 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.

  • NODE Roboticsplugandplay · Robotics and physical worldalive

    Enabling Autonomous Intralogistics.

  • Noriyc S26 · 2026 · Robotics and physical worldalive

    sub-$2000 humanoid robot you can teach to do anything

  • Exosatyc S26 · 2026 · Defense and spacealive

    Building a sovereign Starlink

  • Praxis Roboticsyc S26 · 2026 · Data for AIunchecked

    Turns every company into a data vendor

  • Earendil Roboticsyc S26 · 2026 · Defense and spacealive

    Drone swarm defence at a small-unit level

  • Eden Roboticsyc X26 · 2026 · Robotics and physical worldalive

    Autonomous services for humanity.

  • Synphonyyc X26 · 2026 · Robotics and physical worldalive

    robots & software for farms

  • OctaPulseyc W26 · 2026 · Robotics and physical worldalive

    CV and robotics to automate quality inspection in fish farms

  • Chasiyc W26 · 2026 · Vertical AI agentsalive

    AI Revenue Engine for the Equipment Industry

  • Snowbotixtechstars TS 2026 · 2026 · Robotics and physical worldalive

    Snowbotix

  • Conduitplugandplay PnP 2025 · 2025 · Robotics and physical worldalive

    We’re the one-line code deployment system that gives robots, hardware, and devices instant interoperability.

  • Boost Roboticsyc X25 · 2025 · Robotics and physical worldalive

    Robots for the inspection and maintenance of data centers

Run this as an Idea Check →

The generator's reference companies

Real companies the model named as closest when it wrote the card, with their fate. A check mark is a company the radar could verify in its directory.

Public money in this direction

US federal grants, SBIR/STTR awards and open opportunities from the radar's public-money feed, matched to the idea's terms; the sector totals give the context.

8

grants and programs matching the idea

284

startup-relevant grants in Robotics and physical world

$260M

awarded in the sector, tracked

3

opportunities open now in the sector

All public money by sector →

Market signal

What the radar sees in Robotics and physical world: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.

Robotics and physical world · 77 → 60 → 202 → 133 → 120 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 91% aliveYC S26: 32 in this cluster, 13% of the batch (was 6% in X26) (F26 is still forming: 21 listed)Since February, of 253 YC companies here: 2 acquired, 3 shut down, 33 rewrote their pitch

Robotics and physical world: companies, trend and grants →

Design attributes

The card is one cell of a designed set: every axis below was chosen before the text was written, and the text had to realize it.

Buyer
Enterprise
Business model
Infrastructure and APIs
Path to 100x
Platform others build on
Market size
$1-10B market
Capital intensity
Capital-light (software margins)
Speed to revenue
Revenue within a year
Technical depth
Integrations, no-code
Go-to-market
Partners and channels
Moat
No moat yet
Geography
US first
Regulation
Unregulated
Vibe
Hot space

Listed under

An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.

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Swipe ideas like this in the deckTalk to the radar about it

Fictional company written 2026-08-22 from MarkosWeb data; the companies, grants and numbers around it are real and tracked. Treat the idea as a research prompt, not a plan.