Vangrid raises $9M seed to turn smartphones into a mapping network for Physical AI

Dutch startup Vangrid has raised $9 million in seed funding to build a decentralised spatial intelligence network that runs on smartphones. HashKey, Borderless, Crypto.com Capital, Animoca Brands, Gate Labs, and Mapleblock all backed the round.

Vangrid activates the cameras and sensors in billions of existing phones, turning them into a distributed capture network. The aim is high-fidelity spatial data delivered at the scale and frequency that Physical AI — robots and autonomous systems — needs, without dedicated capture hardware.

The platform positions itself between slow, expensive vehicle-fleet mapping and unverified open crowdsourcing. Faces and license plates are blurred on-device, and each capture is verified onchain for provenance before reaching the enterprise spatial API. Contributors get paid directly; customers get data they can trust.

"Without a decentralised perception grid, billion-dollar robots will remain blind to dynamic human environments," said chief executive officer Robert Brighton. He framed spatial ground truth as "the foundational infrastructure needed for the Physical AI era."

Vangrid has signed new memorandums of understanding with data partners and is engaging organisations building defence and robotics platforms. The company says real transactions are already flowing through the platform.

The round reflects growing investor appetite for the data layer beneath Physical AI, where hardware alone is not enough. Vangrid is betting that a crowdsourced, privacy-first grid can scale at the speed of app downloads rather than procurement cycles.