The challenge of care in an ageing world

When we first started looking at companion robotics for aged care, I’ll admit I was sceptical. In venture capital, scepticism is often a necessary discipline. We’ve all seen robots that are little more than iPads on wheels — cleverly marketed, technically interesting, but ultimately lacking depth. Aged care is too important, too human, for gimmicks.

But the challenge itself is impossible to ignore. We are living longer, yet the number of people available to care for us is shrinking. The World Health Organisation projects a global shortfall of around 11 million health and care workers by 2030. In Australia alone, the gap is expected to reach 110,000 workers within the same timeframe, roughly a quarter of today’s workforce.

Beyond the staffing crisis lies a quieter yet equally devastating reality: loneliness. Around 60% of aged care residents report feeling socially isolated, a condition closely linked to cognitive decline, depression and worsening physical health. The carers who remain are extraordinary, but they are stretched thin, prioritising medication rounds and compliance over the long, slow conversations that make people feel seen.

This is not a problem we can solve by simply hiring more people. They aren’t there. We need a new category of solution, one that augments human care rather than attempting to replace it.

The moment that changed our minds

When we met Grace Brown, the founder of Andromeda Robotics, what struck me wasn’t just her technical capability as a mechatronics engineer. It was her conviction that empathy and engineering belong together. Grace spoke about building a company where the best robotics and AI talent would want to work — not to build novelty, but to build dignity.

Still, a founder’s vision only goes so far. Customers tell the real story.

An aged care provider who had deployed Andromeda Robotics’s first robot, Abi, said something that stopped us in our tracks: “This is the worst Abi is ever going to be and it is already life-changing. Imagine how good the next version will be?”

Anyone who has worked with early hardware knows that alpha releases are rough by design. They are foundations to build upon. Yet here was a customer describing meaningful impact already, not hypothetical future value, but present-day change. It forced us to look again at what was happening inside these facilities. Andromeda Robotics wasn’t just building a robot. They were building relationships. That philosophy is embedded in Abi.

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Abi: a human-plus solution

Abi is a humanoid robot designed not to replace carers, but to support them. Powered by advances in large language models, computer vision and embodied AI, Abi can remember that a resident loves chess, prefers to speak Arabic, or hasn’t attended group activities recently. She can sing, dance, initiate games, and hold slow, patient conversations without needing to rush off to complete another task.

We watched Abi in action inside an aged care facility and saw residents visibly change, leaning forward, engaging, smiling, and participating. In environments where time is scarce, Abi brings something deceptively simple: attention. 

With our investment, Andromeda Robotics will accelerate development of “Gabi,” a more autonomous next-generation system, and expand further into the United States. The ambition is to build a scalable platform for companionship and engagement in care settings globally.

Where this fits in our strategy

At Main Sequence, we invest in science and technology that tackle humanity-scale challenges. Andromeda Robotics sits at the intersection of two of our core themes: the Next Intelligence Leap and Humanity-Scale Health. As artificial intelligence moves beyond chat interfaces and into the physical world, we are entering an era of embodied AI — systems that can perceive, reason and act in complex human environments.

We have previously invested in industrial robotics, but the next frontier is more nuanced. If you want to solve a real problem for a real sector, you can't just build a generalised platform and hope it adapts.  It requires hardware excellence, robust AI systems, and a form factor designed for real-world interaction suitable for the context and environment. Andromeda Robotics combines all three, building not just a robot but a defensible, vertically integrated platform with a growing software moat. As robotics evolves from factory floors into healthcare, homes and communities, we believe companies like Andromeda Robotics will define this new category.

What’s next

Companion robotics may feel like a leap. In an ideal world, every person would have unlimited human time and attention. But demographic reality tells a different story and demands a new way of thinking. We believe Andromeda Robotics represents a new category of care: human-plus systems that augment overstretched workforces while delivering measurable improvements in wellbeing. The convergence of AI capability, hardware maturity and urgent market demand makes this moment uniquely powerful.

Grace has assembled a team capable of delivering on an ambitious vision. This is a team that deeply believes in what they are building, and whose customers reflect that belief back to them. As the company builds the next generation of its platform and expands into new markets, we will support it through our networks, strategic guidance and capital. 

The mission is clear: build technology that restores dignity, joy and connection at scale. Sometimes, the most human connection can be sparked by a machine. We believe Andromeda Robotics can prove exactly that.