The most valuable piece of hardware in the world is the one that already exists. Every year, roughly 60 million tons of electronics are discarded, a pile of lithium, cobalt, and aluminum that is also a $50 billion asset [F4 Fund, retrieved 2026]. Revise Robotics, a New York-based startup that just raised a $3.6 million seed round, thinks the answer is to take the person out of the loop entirely [Preqin, May 2025]. Their bet is a modular robotic system that can autonomously process hundreds of mixed laptops a day.
The automation wedge
Refurbishment is a classic bottleneck business. Revise Robotics is building a system designed to be dropped into an existing refurbishment facility, acting as in-house automation infrastructure. Its AI and computer vision are trained to manipulate devices: testing components, wiping hard drives, and posting the refurbished laptop to online marketplaces [Revise Robotics, retrieved 2026].
The team and the check
The company was founded in 2024 by Rupesh Jeyaram and Antonio Monreal and was part of Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch [Y Combinator, early 2025]. Jeyaram holds an MBA from Wharton, while Monreal is a Caltech alum with a background in system design at firms like Synaptics [Impact, Value, and Sustainable Business Initiative, 2025] [RocketReach, retrieved 2026].
| Founder | Role | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Rupesh Jeyaram | Co-founder & CEO | Wharton MBA, focus on Business, Energy, Environment and Sustainability |
| Antonio Monreal | Co-founder & CTO | Caltech; previous system design experience at Synaptics and Oracle |
Where the unit economics get real
The pitch to refurbishers hinges on throughput and labor. If a single robotic cell can process several hundred laptops per day with minimal human oversight, the math shifts from cost-center to profit-center. The system's ability to handle any model or OS is key, eliminating the downtime typically required when switching between device batches [Revise Robotics, retrieved 2026].
The incumbent to beat
The most direct competitive pressure comes from the status quo: the global network of manual labor that currently does this work. Revise Robotics must prove that its systems are not just faster, but also more reliable and ultimately cheaper per device than a human workforce. Its early focus on the relatively standardized laptop is a smart wedge, but the real test will be moving into more complex or damaged devices.