FAQ
Short answers, grouped the way the questions arrive. Every answer links to the guide, line or term that goes deeper.
General liability with the customer named as additional insured, equipment coverage for the units that leave your building, and workers' compensation for the people who install them. Tech E&O follows once the customer relies on the machine's output, and a hospital or utility site often adds an umbrella. The pilot agreement's insurance exhibit sets the limits, so read it before you quote a start date.
Tech E&O is the anchor, because a model's output causing a customer a financial loss is the live exposure. Cyber sits beside it once you hold customer data in production. General liability arrives with the first lease or contract that asks for a certificate, and D&O with the first priced round. Each form needs reading for an AI exclusion before it binds.
Usually yes, because the triggers are documents, not revenue. A lease asks for general liability, a first hire brings workers' compensation in most states, and a term sheet can make D&O a closing condition. A prototype on a bench needs less than a machine at a customer site, so buy in the order your contracts ask.
Whatever your signed documents require, and little else. For most seed companies that means general liability for the lease, workers' compensation once you have employees, and D&O if investors take board seats. Tech E&O and cyber come with the first enterprise customer. Hardware companies add equipment coverage the first time a unit leaves the building.
At or before the first priced round. Term sheets often make it a closing condition, and incoming board members expect it before they take the seat. D&O is claims-made, so buying before a dispute starts matters more than the exact month.
Once a policy or binder is in force and carries the endorsements your contract asks for, issuing a certificate is a short broker task. The delay comes when the contract asks for something the policy lacks, such as a waiver of subrogation, because the insurer has to add it first. Send the insurance exhibit early and that step moves out of the way.
Read more: The certificate of insurance, explained for founders
A one-page summary your broker issues showing which policies you carry, their limits and dates, and who holds the certificate. It proves coverage exists and changes nothing about it. Additional insured status and waivers come from endorsements on the policy, which the certificate only reports.
It means a landlord or customer has been added to your policy by endorsement and can claim under it for suits arising from your work. If your robot injures someone on their floor and they are sued, they can send the suit to your insurer. The endorsement creates the right, and a ticked box on a certificate does not.
An endorsement in which your insurer gives up its right to recover a paid claim from a party your contract names. Customers ask for it on general liability, workers' compensation and auto so your insurer cannot pay your loss and then sue them. It has to be on the policy before the certificate can show it.
Your policy pays first for a claim involving the additional insured, and your insurer cannot ask the customer's own policy to share the loss. Customers and landlords ask for it so claims your work causes stay off their insurance record. It is usually granted by endorsement when a written contract requires it.
Yes, and procurement expects it more often than founders assume. Limits, the lines required, and indemnity language that reaches beyond what any policy pays are all common points to move. Ask before you sign, because a promise your policy cannot keep leaves you in breach of the contract.
A certificate of general liability naming the site owner as additional insured, usually at $1M per occurrence and $2M aggregate, and workers' compensation with a waiver of subrogation for your technicians. Hospitals and utilities often ask for higher limits through an umbrella, and enterprise sites add tech E&O and cyber when the machine touches their systems.
It is a common ask on hospital templates written for clinical vendors. The usual answer is an umbrella over a $1M primary general liability policy instead of a larger primary. The professional liability line and limit are often the negotiable part, so ask whether the template fits a machine before you price it.
It depends on whether the endorsements are blanket or scheduled. A blanket additional insured endorsement picks up any party your written contract requires, while a scheduled one needs the new name added. New locations, new states and new kinds of work can also need a change before the policy matches what you signed.
Everyone in the chain can be named: the company that built the robot, the integrator, the operator and sometimes the site owner. Contracts then move the loss between them through indemnity clauses. Your general liability and its products and completed operations coverage are the policies that answer your share, subject to their wording.
Damage your operations cause to property you do not own is what general liability is built for, once the insurer knows the machine is there. The questions to settle are whether the form contemplates autonomous operation and whether an AI exclusion has been attached. Damage to the robot itself belongs to equipment coverage.
It is property insurance for equipment that moves, named after the cargo insurance it grew from. A property policy covers contents at your own address, while inland marine follows scheduled units in transit, at pilot sites and at demos. That is how a robot fleet actually operates.
Transit is a core part of what equipment coverage answers, once each unit is listed with a real value. A crated robot lost between your dock and the pilot site is the claim this line exists for. Read the theft and unattended-equipment wording, because units left on a customer site overnight are where forms differ.
Some general liability forms exclude products that are not yet commercially sold, which leaves demo units and pilot hardware in an awkward spot. Tell the insurer what is in the field and in what state of development. Equipment coverage can protect the unit itself if it is scheduled, whatever its commercial status.
It can, if the policy assumed a person at the controls or carries an exclusion that reaches the autonomy stack. That is why the application has to describe autonomous operation plainly and the form has to be read for it. A policy placed with the operation disclosed is far harder to argue over later.
Usually because the submission went to an insurer without appetite for machines around people, or the application had no fields for what the machine does. A declination records one insurer's view of one submission. The same operation, described with its operating envelope, testing record and contracts, often gets quoted by insurers who want the risk.
Yes. Robotics companies buy the same lines other operating companies buy, placed with insurers that write machine risk and presented so the underwriter can see how the machine works. What changes is how much the wording and the presentation matter.
An endorsement that removes coverage for claims involving artificial intelligence. Limited versions remove a defined slice, such as losses arising from generative AI output, and absolute versions remove anything related to AI in any way. Our tracker lists the filed forms with a dated source for each.
The insurance industry's standard-forms bureau released generative AI exclusion endorsements for general liability and for products and completed operations, effective January 2026 (Independent Agent magazine, 2025-10-21). Insurers adopt them by filing state by state, so whether one is on your policy depends on your insurer and your renewal.
Check the endorsement schedule on the declarations page of each policy and compare it with last year's. Look for any title mentioning artificial intelligence, generative AI or automated systems, and read the definition inside it. If you find one on a policy your product depends on, raise it before the renewal binds.
It is AI risk a policy neither names as covered nor excludes, so whether it responds depends on how general wording is read after a loss. Most policies bought before 2025 are silent. Insurers are now closing that ambiguity with exclusions on one side and affirmative endorsements on the other.
It is wording or a standalone policy that names AI-related losses as covered. In 2026 it appeared as endorsements to cyber and E&O and as dedicated AI liability products, usually at modest limits and with triggers that differ by product. We do not name insurers here, and wording governs every one of them.
Tech E&O is the line meant to respond when your technology's work causes a customer a financial loss, and a model's output is your technology's work. Whether a specific policy responds depends on how it defines professional services and whether an AI exclusion is attached. Both get read before the policy binds.
It depends on how the policy defines a security event, and most of those definitions were written before language models existed. A prompt injection that exposes customer data may fit the definition, or it may be argued as a product failure that belongs to tech E&O. Read both forms together.
Rarely in practice for the company that deployed it. Model providers' terms of service push liability to whoever built the product on the model, and your customer's contract is with you. The lab that trained the model is usually not a party to that contract, so the claim stops with the company in the middle.
Many. A reinsurer's research note counted more than sixty insurer groups filing to adopt AI exclusions, with more than eighty percent of filings approved (2026-08-26). Our AI exclusions tracker lists the forms and filings row by row, each with its primary source and date.
No. The federal rule for commercial small drone operations sets pilot and operating requirements and does not require insurance (14 CFR Part 107, accessed 2026-09-12). The requirement arrives through customers, venues and municipalities, which commonly ask for aviation liability before a flight.
The standard general liability form excludes injury and damage arising from aircraft, and a drone is an aircraft. Operators buy aviation liability instead, or an endorsement that brings small unmanned aircraft back into general liability. Manufacturers face a separate question about products they sold that fly.
California requires evidence of $5M in insurance, a surety bond or self-insurance before a manufacturer tests autonomous vehicles on public roads (California DMV, accessed 2026-09-12). Other states set their own rules, and many have none specific to autonomy. The claim itself can land on auto or product liability, so both need reading.
It follows the spacecraft through pre-launch, launch and in-orbit operation, with third-party liability alongside. Ground and transit exposure starts as soon as flight hardware exists. Liability is the piece with a deadline, because launch providers and licensing ask for it before the slot is confirmed.
It depends on the contract and where the work happens. Research awards performed at your own site often carry light insurance requirements, while work on a government installation brings federal minimums for general liability, auto and workers' compensation into the contract. Read the insurance clauses at award, because the certificate is due before work starts.
Check the endorsement schedule for clauses naming export controls, defense articles or government and military use. They are common on liability forms written for commercial markets. A company with controlled technology or a first defense contract should disclose it on the application and read for both before signing.
Published survey medians give a floor, not a quote. A venture-focused startup insurer's survey reported median annual premiums of $180 for general liability, $3,700 for E&O, $2,900 for cyber and $6,300 for D&O (2026-05-21). Machines in the field, autonomy and higher contract limits move a company well away from those medians, so we do not publish a number of our own.
Nothing beyond your premium. The insurer pays our commission out of the premium, the same commission built into a policy whether or not a broker places it. A licensed broker reads the forms before binding and stays on your file after.
We check the filled application with you, present it to insurers who write your kind of operation, and read each quote's wording before recommending one. You accept a quote, the insurer binds coverage, and certificates can be issued against the binder. Timing depends on the lines and on how unusual the operation is, and we give you updates until it binds.
Read more: The certificate of insurance, explained for founders
These answers describe coverage in general terms. They are not an offer of insurance, and carrier appetite, policy wording, licensing, and availability govern every quote and every claim.
