Latest news and articles about startups
OpenAI and Dell have partnered to deploy Codex, OpenAI's AI coding model, in hybrid and on-premise enterprise environments, enabling organizations to use AI-assisted code generation securely within their own infrastructure. This partnership allows enterprises to integrate AI coding agents into their existing workflows while maintaining control over sensitive data and systems.
Asimov v1, an open-source humanoid robot kit, is now available with a target price of $15,000 USD, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for humanoid robotics development compared to corporate projects. The robot features 25 degrees of freedom, runs on Raspberry Pi 5 and Radaxa CM5 compute, and includes open-source hardware designs on GitHub to enable hobbyists and researchers to build and customize their own humanoid systems.
While humanoids grab headlines and coding agents dominate the AI conversation, a quiet revolution is unfolding on factory floors. Mind Robotics' $400 million raise signals that the real money — and real innovation — is flowing toward general-purpose manufacturing automation.
In the final week of the Musk v. Altman trial, lawyers traded blows over Elon Musk's and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's credibility. Altman was grilled on his alleged history of lying and self-dealing involv...
xAI has launched Grok Build, a coding agent designed to compete with products like Anthropic's Claude Code, initially available in beta to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers ($300/month). The release comes as xAI attempts to catch up with competitors in coding capabilities following founder Elon Musk's acknowledgment that the company had fallen behind on this front.
Databricks announced that GPT-5.5 is now available for enterprise agent workflows, achieving state-of-the-art performance on the company's OfficeQA Pro benchmark with 50% accuracy and 46% error reduction compared to GPT-5.4. The model demonstrates significant improvements in parsing legacy documents, scanned PDFs, and orchestrating multi-step enterprise tasks through Databricks' AI Unity Gateway, AgentBricks, and Agent Supervisor API.
A maker successfully demonstrates directional control of a vibrobot using only a single vibrating motor by rapidly switching the motor's rotation direction to approximate straight-line movement. The design, based on academic research, uses an ESP-01F microcontroller and Wi-Fi remote control to switch motor direction every 250 milliseconds, enabling the robot to follow traced paths despite slightly erratic movement.
Mind Robotics just raised $400 million with foundation models at the core of its pitch. Microsoft is building foundation models for power grids. Material science is getting its own foundation model treatment. The robotics industry isn't just adopting AI—it's being reorganized around it.
Sea Limited's Chief Product Officer discusses the company's deployment of Codex, an AI tool, across engineering teams to advance AI-native software development practices in Asia. The initiative represents a strategic adoption of AI-powered development tools to accelerate engineering productivity and innovation.
Mind Robotics, spun out from Rivian by founder RJ Scaringe, raised $400 million to scale AI-powered general-purpose robots for manufacturing automation, bringing total funding to over $1 billion. The company is developing a full-stack platform combining foundation models, purpose-built robotics, and deployment infrastructure, with Rivian serving as its first customer and providing manufacturing environments for model training and data collection.
Anthro Energy and EnPower signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop and manufacture high-performance lithium-ion battery cells in the U.S. for robotics, autonomous systems, and defense applications. The partnership combines Anthro's advanced polymer electrolyte technology with EnPower's domestic manufacturing capabilities to create a vertically integrated U.S. battery supply chain, with plans to scale production beyond 750 MWh for applications including drones, unmanned vehicles, and embodied AI systems.
This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. A plan to make drugs in orbit is going commercial A startup ca...
Alva Industries will exhibit at the 2026 Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston, showcasing its SlimTorq frameless motor technology and proprietary FiberPrinting manufacturing process. The company will demonstrate its thin, lightweight frameless motors designed for robotic joints, collaborative arm actuators, exoskeletons, and precision positioning systems, with evaluation units available for engineers to assess.
A wave of recent announcements reveals a fundamental shift in robotics development: companies aren't competing anymore—they're collaborating. From Comau-OMRON to Config's manufacturing backers, the industry is consolidating around shared infrastructure and expertise.
Comau and OMRON Robotics announced a strategic partnership to accelerate industrial automation adoption across electronics, semiconductors, medical manufacturing, and light industrial sectors. The collaboration will integrate their complementary robotics hardware, control technologies, and software platforms to deliver more flexible and easily deployable automation solutions for global manufacturers.
While humanoids grab headlines, specialized service robots are quietly solving real labor shortages in automotive repair shops and tire centers. The unglamorous work of changing tires and inspecting vehicles is becoming the unexpected frontier of practical robotics deployment.
Automated Tire Inc. unveiled SmartBay, an AI-powered robotic platform that automates tire changes and vehicle inspections without removing wheels from vehicles. The system can reduce service times to 30 minutes while enabling one technician to manage three bays simultaneously, addressing labor shortages in automotive service by replacing manual, injury-prone work with computer vision and robotics.
Hello Robot announced Stretch 4, an upgraded version of its mobile manipulation platform now priced at $29,950, featuring twice the speed of Stretch 3, extended reach, and a comprehensive sensor array with dual 3D lidars and multiple cameras for improved safety and autonomy. The robot is designed for general-purpose physical AI applications in dynamic environments like homes, with enhanced sensing capabilities to detect obstacles and people while performing manipulation tasks.
Config's $27 million Series A from Samsung and other Korean manufacturers signals a strategic shift in how Asia approaches robotics development. While Western companies race to build better robots, Korea is betting that whoever controls the training data will control the industry.
RLWRLD unveiled RLDX-1, a dexterity-first foundation model designed specifically for high-degree-of-freedom robotic hands in industrial applications. The model integrates vision, force sensing, temporal reasoning, and memory to handle complex manipulation tasks like pouring, object tracking, and precise contact control across single-arm, dual-arm, and humanoid embodiments.
Config, a Seoul and San Jose-based startup building data infrastructure for robotic foundation models, raised $27 million in Series A funding led by Samsung Venture Investment at a $200+ million valuation. The company positions itself as a TSMC-equivalent for robot data, supplying training data to manufacturers rather than building robots themselves, with backing from major Korean manufacturers including Hyundai, LG, and SKT.
OpenAI has launched the OpenAI Deployment Company, a new business unit to help organizations build and deploy AI systems at scale, with initial backing of over $4 billion from 19 investment firms and consulting partners. The company will employ Forward Deployed Engineers (including approximately 150 from the acquisition of consulting firm Tomoro) to work directly with enterprises to integrate AI into critical workflows and operational processes.
The startup has expanded to more than 230 cities across the world, but has yet to become profitable.
While humanoid robots and AI agents dominate headlines, a quieter revolution is happening in battery technology. Nyobolt's $60M raise signals that fast charging — not computing power or dexterity — may determine which robots actually make it out of the lab.
In the second week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk's motivations for bringing the suit were under scrutiny. Last week, Musk took the stand, alleging that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman...
Eric Chan, Chief Scientist at Rhoda AI, discusses how Direct Video Action (DVA) models trained on internet video data are replacing traditional robotics data collection methods. The approach enables robots to learn complex tasks with minimal training data and supports zero-shot learning capabilities for real-world deployment.
Nyobolt, a Cambridge-based fast-charging battery company, has raised $60 million in funding at a $1 billion+ valuation to accelerate deployment of its power systems for autonomous mobile robots and physical AI applications. The company's batteries deliver significantly improved performance for warehouse robots and autonomous systems, with Symbotic leading the investment round and deploying Nyobolt's technology in its SymBot AMRs for 24/7 warehouse operations.
Two new approaches to robot training reveal a fundamental split in AI robotics: Genesis AI betting on human-shaped hands and simulation, while Tutor Intelligence deploys 100 real robots with remote human tutors. The answer to which path works better may define the next decade of robotics.
Hugging Face launched an agentic toolkit for Reachy Mini, an open-source desktop robot, that enables users to build applications without coding by describing desired behaviors in plain English while an AI agent writes and deploys the code. The toolkit dramatically lowers barriers to robotics development by removing the need for technical expertise, expensive hardware, and lengthy integration work, with Hugging Face's app store now offering over 200 community-built applications ranging from voice-controlled facilitators to chess-playing companions.
The Robot Report announced the 2026 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards, recognizing 50 leading robotics organizations globally for technology and business innovation. This year's honorees span industrial automation, AI advances, mobile manipulators, autonomous vehicles, and humanitarian robotics applications, with Physical Intelligence named Startup of the Year and Harvard University recognized for an application helping people with impaired arm motion.
After decades of false starts with social robots, a new wave of startups is betting that emotionally intelligent companions can finally find a place in our homes. But this time, they're learning from past failures—and building very different machines.
Colin Angle, co-founder of iRobot, has launched Familiar Machines & Magic, a startup developing consumer companion robots called Familiars designed to form emotionally intelligent, long-term relationships with users. The company, which emerged from stealth, combines Angle's 30+ years of consumer robotics experience with a team including veterans from iRobot, Amazon, Disney Research, MIT, and Boston Dynamics to build a platform for artificial life.
Brightpick CEO Jan Zizka will present at the Robotics Summit & Expo on May 27-28 in Boston, outlining a practical roadmap toward fully automated lights-out warehouse operations. The talk will address how hybrid human-robot systems are making incremental progress toward autonomous warehouses, where robots handle repetitive tasks while humans manage exceptions, with discussion of the technical and economic challenges of automating the final workflow edge cases.
Parloa, a Berlin-based startup, has built an AI Agent Management Platform (AMP) that uses OpenAI models to help enterprises design, deploy, and manage voice-driven customer service agents without coding. The platform allows non-technical teams to define agent behavior in natural language, simulate conversations with AI models before deployment, and continuously evaluate performance in production environments.
Simplex integrates ChatGPT Enterprise and Codex to accelerate software development workflows, focusing on reducing design, build, and testing cycles. The platform leverages AI-driven automation to scale development processes and improve efficiency.
From Wonder's AI-generated restaurants to Genesis AI's piano-playing hands, the robotics industry is racing to automate cooking and food service. But this surge in culinary automation reveals less about consumer demand and more about where the real money in robotics lies — and it's not in your kitchen.
Genesis AI, a Khosla-backed startup that raised $105M for foundational AI in robotics, unveiled its GENE-26.5 model along with a human-hand-shaped robotic hand it designed in-house. The startup developed a sensor-loaded data collection glove and uses simulation to accelerate model training, aiming to bridge the embodiment gap in robotics by collecting human manipulation data to train robots for complex tasks like cooking, lab work, and other real-world applications.
Genesis AI unveiled GENE-26.5, an AI foundation model designed for dexterous robotic manipulation that enables robots to perform complex, human-level tasks like cooking, lab work, and piano playing. The company also introduced a proprietary robotic hand that mirrors human anatomy and a data-collection system with tactile sensing to enable direct skill transfer from humans to robots, addressing a fundamental bottleneck in training robotics foundation models.
Marc Lore's Wonder is using AI to automate restaurant creation and operations, enabling anyone to launch a restaurant brand in under a minute through an AI-powered platform that generates menus, branding, and recipes. The company operates 120 programmable kitchen locations with robotic cooking equipment like conveyor systems and robotic arms, and recently acquired Spice Robotics to further automate food preparation, with plans to scale to 400 locations by next year.
WaiV Robotics emerged from stealth with a $7.5 million seed-funded autonomous landing platform designed to enable drones to safely take off and land from moving ships at sea. The system uses a patent-pending catch-lock-release mechanism combined with AI-driven predictive algorithms to handle the challenges of maritime drone operations, working with any drone without requiring hardware or software modifications.
Tutor Intelligence has built DF1, a Data Factory featuring 100 bimanual robotic manipulators trained by remote human tutors to develop its Ti0 vision-language-action model for real-world robot learning. The MIT-CSAIL-founded startup raised $34 million in Series A funding in December 2025 and claims DF1 is the largest robotic data factory in the U.S., using proprioceptive teleoperation and velocity normalization techniques to train generally capable robot AI at scale.
While headlines obsess over humanoid robots in factories, a quieter revolution is happening in logistics hubs. From Tokyo's baggage handlers to California's autonomous trucks, the unglamorous work of moving stuff from point A to point B is where robotics is actually proving its commercial viability.
Colin Angle, founder of iRobot, launched a new startup called Familiar Machines & Magic with a companion robot designed to perform "emotional work" and reduce loneliness through physical presence and interaction. The robot, called a "familiar," is a small quadruped with 23 degrees of freedom, fuzzy exterior, edge AI processing, and communicates through motion and behavior rather than screens or speech, aiming to integrate into daily life in ways existing companion robots have failed to achieve.
Ouster announced Rev8, a new family of lidar sensors featuring patented native-color lidar technology that combines 3D structural data with color vision in a single sensor. The sensors are powered by Ouster's L4 Silicon architecture and offer double the range and resolution of previous generations, positioning them for autonomous systems and industrial applications requiring advanced 3D perception.
Meta's acquisition of robotics startup ARI and its push into humanoid development reveals a troubling shift: the future of general-purpose robots is being written in Silicon Valley boardrooms, not robotics labs. As tech giants race to control the humanoid market, smaller innovators face a stark choice—get bought or get left behind.
Meta has acquired Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI), a robotics AI startup, to advance its humanoid robot development efforts. ARI's expertise in designing AI models for robot control and whole-body humanoid systems will be integrated into Meta's Superintelligence Labs, with the startup's founders joining Meta's team to build general-purpose physical agents trained on human experience.
FAULHABER released its DualGear drive system, a compact dual-motor solution designed for autonomous logistics and conveyor belt applications in space-constrained intralogistics environments. The system combines a brushless BX4 motor with dual GPT planetary gearheads to enable two synchronized movements from a single drive unit, reducing integration effort and system costs while maintaining high performance and control accuracy.
The Robot Report Podcast episode discusses how robotics and AI startups can navigate enterprise adoption, featuring insights from Silicon Foundry's CEO Neal Hansch. The episode also covers news including the 2026 Engelberger Robotics Awards honoring industry leaders, Flex and Teradyne's expanded partnership to deploy collaborative robots and AMRs for physical AI scale, and Figure AI's significant production milestone of achieving 24x throughput increase to one humanoid robot per hour at its BotQ facility.
In the first week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk took the stand in a crisp black suit and tie and argued that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived h...
This article is a roundup of the top 10 robotics stories from April 2026, covering major developments including Tesla's plans to manufacture 10 million Optimus humanoid robots, Pudu Robotics' $150M funding round, Locus Robotics' autonomous fulfillment system, ABB's new collaborative robot family, and Generalist AI's GEN-1 general-purpose model achieving 99% task success rates. The month saw significant technical milestones, large funding rounds, and industry consolidation across humanoid robotics, industrial automation, and AI-powered systems.
