Rémi Cadene, a veteran of Tesla's Autopilot and Optimus programs, has launched UMA, a physical AI startup in Paris, to build a lightweight, repairable humanoid robot called Northstar for European warehouse and manufacturing floors. UMA's founding team includes Pierre Sermanet as chief science officer, Simon Alibert as CTO, and Robert Knight as chief robot officer, with advisers including Meta's Yann LeCun and Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf. Backers include Greycroft, Red River West, Kima Ventures, and Factorial. Reports suggest UMA targeted roughly $40 million in seed funding, though the company hasn't confirmed a final number. UMA is building Northstar for manufacturing and logistics, a dual-arm mobile industrial robot for warehouse and assembly lines, and a compact humanoid for hospitals, labs, and eventually homes. Pilot programs in logistics and manufacturing are planned for 2026, with conversations reportedly underway with about 50 potential customers. UMA's launch positioning centers on real-world deployment in demanding industrial settings, but the company still lacks hard published specifications. European competitors Neura Robotics and Sereact are already working the continent's industrial base, while U.S. players Figure and 1X are further along the deployment curve.