Mail.ru CEO builds a fund for robotics of tomorrow

Starting with $25M, Dmitry Girshin hopes to fund 10-20 robotics projects from home helpers to drones

A quick glance through sic-fi movies from the last 80 years will tell you that the future of technology and change is deeply rooted in robotics and cyborg technology -- and the ending of those movies will tell you if it is for better or worse.

And one entrepreneur,  Dmitry Girshin, CEO of Grishin Robotics, and Mail.ru is betting $25 million that robotics will be the next be step in consumer technology to take off. 

Today Girshin announced that his goal is to fund new research and products in the personal robotics space starting with an initial $25 million fund that could help start 10-20 robotics projects in the field of home helper bots, cleaning systems, and drones. 

The headquarters, while not active yet, will be based in New York.

Grishin is currently the CEO of Mail.ru, which was founded by serial entrepreneur Yuri Milner and is now the largest Internet company in the Russian-speaking world but it is clear that his passions and talents extend beyong the Russian Internet content conglomerate. 

"Our planet has not seen revolutionary breakthroughs in the offline world for many years," Grishin wrote on his robotics website. "The robotics industry is uniquely positioned to leverage recent innovations made in software, Internet and smartphones and combine them to make a tremendous global impact. We are at the start of a transformative period for robotics that requires a new breed of risk-takers to drive mass-market adoption."

In 2011, Grishin notices that the robotics market received roughly $160 million in venture funding in two main areas: industrial robotics and service robotics. But because of a lot of health and energy factors, Grishin believes that the personal use of robots is poised to take off and could become an $18 billion industry by 2015 -- that's a three-fold increase from this year's almost $6 billion estimates from ABU Research. 

This is clearly a passion project for Grishin who graduated with distinction from the Faculty of Robotics and Complex Automation at Moscow State Technical University. 

So, who knows, perhaps in coming years Grishin Robotics will be the name behind companies building the next health care robot or personal assistant drone.

I think it is fair to say that many of us that are familiar with the concept are extremely excited and scared by the robotics of the future - I for one will keep my eye on it.

(Image Source: ScrapeTV)