Sunshine Lake Spotlight

We backed Dynamic Creatures before it emerged from stealth.

By Don Stalter, Founder · September 2026

We backed Dynamic Creatures in its initial financing to tackle the critical challenge in robotics: human acceptance. Industrial robots are built for tasks, while traditional animatronics are fixed, scripted and unable to engage people naturally. Dynamic Creatures is building the interface between people and machines, turning advanced robotics into expressive, interactive characters designed for environments where trust, personality and emotional engagement are of paramount importance. They have just emerged from stealth as Boston Dynamics' official entertainment and hospitality partner, with an article in Fortune.

Dynamic Creatures' own announcement can be found here.

Marc Theermann is exactly the kind of founder Sunshine Lake was built to back: internationally forged, deeply experienced in his industry, and building an ambitious company in the U.S.

In her Fortune article, Allie emphasizes Marc's international background, stating that “Theermann's wanted to work with robots since he was a kid, growing up in the countryside in Brüggen, Germany.”

Why we backed Marc

Marc Theermann grew up in rural Germany, with Star Wars' iconic R2D2 as his earliest memory of a robot. His professional path took him through Google and into the Chief Strategy Officer role at Boston Dynamics, where he helped build its commercial business.

At Boston Dynamics, Marc had a front-row seat to an interesting market signal: as the company deepened its industrial focus under Hyundai, demand for entertainment applications kept coming in. Marc saw an opportunity hiding in that gap. Rather than build another robotics hardware company from scratch, Dynamic Creatures could build the characters, intelligence and operating layer on top of proven robotic platforms.

Cofounder and CTO Farbod Farshidian brings robotics research experience from ETH Zurich and the Robotics and AI Institute. Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert is also an investor. That technical depth, alongside Marc's commercial experience and Raibert's backing, gives the team a strong starting position.

A growing market with trillion dollar potential

The Fortune article highlights the high growth of the robotics market:

“Over the next five years, robots are going to walk into every aspect of our lives.”

“There's a pull from the market, and humans are super excited to interact more with robots.”

Dynamic Creatures is developing mobile characters that can engage with guests. The initial suite of characters includes Danielle, a lavender poodle built on Boston Dynamics' Spot, and Hugo, a Tyrolean mountain troll. SnowJay, the company's AI and robotics platform, integrates movement, perception and character behavior.

For a theme park, resort or retailer, a compelling character could become an experience that visitors seek out and return for. We like starting in supervised venues: there is an identifiable buyer, a budget and a setting in which the team can measure engagement, reliability and operating cost.

The larger opportunity is to reuse the technology across characters and venues, turning custom work into a repeatable business. Over time, that operating experience could support companion robots in the home, which would require a separate product, safety and economic case.

Capital efficiency in a capex intensive industry

Full stack humanoid companies are financing robots, AI and production at once. Figure announced more than $1 billion in committed Series C capital in September 2025. That illustrates the scale of the commitment that robotics architecture typically demands.

Dynamic Creatures can build on proven third party hardware and foundation models while owning the character software, integration and customer relationship. That allows more capital to go toward the layer we believe can compound: SnowJay, their customer deployments and a reusable operating platform. As the software and operating layer are reused across characters, platforms and venues, each new deployment can become more repeatable and more capital efficient.

A regulatory compliance opportunity in US integration

The FCC's July 28 action restricts new equipment authorizations for covered foreign produced advanced robotic devices. One prospective business model combines imported mechanical hardware, including Chinese components, with US compute and software, domestic assembly and local support. A US importer of record and integration partner could earn revenue from adapting, deploying and servicing those systems. Dynamic Creatures is already going through this process for its own robots to enable US compliance, and it opens up the possibility of ancillary revenue streams to offer this to other domestic robotics companies seeking to use foreign platforms.

Sunshine Lake invested in Dynamic Creatures in May, several months before its public debut. Our conviction rests on the team, the market it has chosen and the chance to build a category defining company. We are excited to see the initial deployment of Dynamic Creatures robots and will be sharing prototype videos as soon as they are available.

If you'd like to dive deeper into Dynamic Creatures or how software is reshaping the robotics industry, let me know, and I'd love to discuss further.

Background reading on the upcoming robotics wave

1. International Federation of Robotics Service Robots See Global Growth Boom Historical service robot adoption, including hospitality.
2. J.P. Morgan Private Bank Robotics: The next big frontier in AI The growth outlook and the forces shaping adoption.
3. McKinsey & Company Turning humanoid supply chain constraints into billion dollar wins Hardware costs, manufacturing and supply chain constraints.
4. Gartner Humanoid robot production adoption forecast through 2028 The gap between demonstrations and scaled deployment.
5. The Walt Disney Company Bringing Frozen's Olaf robotic character to life A firsthand account of expressive character robotics.