Klajd Lika

Klajd Lika is founder and CEO of Bota Systems, a Zurich company that makes force-torque sensors that give robots a sense of touch. He is a robotics entrepreneur and mechanical engineer with more than 14 years of experience in robotic sensing.

He began studying robotic engineering in Athens and continued at ETH Zurich, where he built his first force-torque sensor for the legged robot ANYmal. Development of what became Bota's technology started in 2013. After the Kickstart Accelerator in 2016 and a year of research at ETH, the team incorporated Bota Systems in 2020 as an ETH spin-off, with Ilias Patsiaouras as CTO and Marco Hutter as co-founder.

Bota received support from Venture Kick, the Gebert Rüf Stiftung and ESA BIC Switzerland. In 2023 it raised a USD 2.5 million seed round led by Marathon Venture Capital. By then it had more than 100 customers in over 30 countries, who use its sensors for tasks such as polishing, delicate assembly, telepresence and task teaching.