Ex-Tesla scientist launches Paris humanoid startup UMA
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- Rémi Cadène launched Paris-based UMA in December 2025 alongside co-founders including former Hugging Face engineer Simon Alibert and robot designer Rob Knight, unveiling plans for a humanoid called Northstar and industrial pilot programs as early as this year.
- Cadène spent roughly three years at Tesla working on Autopilot AI and Optimus before joining Hugging Face in early 2024, where he led LeRobot — an open-source robotics library that grew from zero to 12,000+ GitHub stars in about a year.
- UMA is backed by Greycroft, Relentless, and Unity Growth, with angel investors including Yann LeCun, Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel, and Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, and says it is already talking to 50 potential customers.
- UMA is targeting Europe as its beachhead market, citing high labor costs, an aging workforce, and dense industrial base — a contrarian bet against the US- and China-led humanoid race.
- Tesla is targeting low-volume production for its third-generation Optimus at Fremont this summer, but Elon Musk admitted in January that no Optimus robots are doing 'useful work' at Tesla and the company has announced no external customers.
- Figure's robots have run shifts at BMW's Spartanburg plant, helping build tens of thousands of vehicles — described as the clearest example of a humanoid doing real commercial-scale work.
- The source notes UMA has no shipping product yet and that the biggest bottleneck in humanoid robotics is software — the area where Cadène's LeRobot pedigree gives the startup its strongest claim.
Why it matters: UMA enters a field where Tesla's Optimus has yet to do useful work and Figure already runs shifts at BMW. With no shipping product and 50 potential customers, whether those conversations convert to paid pilots this year will determine if Europe gets a credible homegrown humanoid champion or just another demo-heavy entrant.
