BusinessSingle source
Why humanoid robot demos still fail the generalization test
How better data and human judgment can help robots move beyond demos toward reliable real-world performance.
News
Wire
Every funding round, launch and paper, as it's reported.
BusinessSingle source
Mecka raises $60M Series B led by Sequoia for human-demonstration robot data
Mecka said in a company post on Oct 7 that it closed a $60 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital, with NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Qualcomm Ventures and Samsung joining and Kindred, Framework Ventures and Neo returning. The startup builds multi-sensor capture hardware, runs fleets that record people doing everyday work, and turns the footage into training data and post-trained models for robot deployments; it said run-rate revenue passed $100 million in June and that it aims for $300 million by year end. The money goes to data infrastructure, its research lab and commercial robot deployments, the company said. In MEKAWIRE's database the round would be the sixth-largest of 12 robotics Series B rounds recorded in 2026, behind Sereact's $110 million.
Research
HiPHI: A Large-Scale Benchmark for High-Precision Human Motion and Object Interaction
This White Paper gives robotics researchers and engineers an overview of a new large-scale motion capture dataset built to close the data gap limiting humanoid robot learning. It also shows how policies trained on the dataset transfer to a real humanoid robot.
BusinessSingle source
Precision In Motion. Vishay Precision Group, Inc. (VPG) to Showcase Custom Sensing Capabilities for Humanoid Robotics at RoboBusiness 2026
As humanoid robots move from research labs into factories, warehouses, homes, and other shared spaces, accurate physical feedback becomes crucial.
Funding
Extend Robotics raises GBP 2.6 million Pre-A to sell factories finished work instead of robots
Extend Robotics said on Sep 28 that it closed a GBP 2.6 million Pre-A round led by Skyworks Venture Capital Fund, with Neo Venture (Europe) and Zip Capital joining. The Reading-based teleoperation company charges customers for completed work rather than equipment, says it has 35 subscription customers, and will use the money to expand across UK and European industry and build a remote operator network.
Funding
London's Humanoid raises $152 million at a $1.35 billion valuation as Schaeffler and Bosch buy in
Humanoid, a two-year-old London robotics company, closed a $152 million Series A led by Prime Movers Lab at a $1.35 billion post-money valuation, with industrial partners Schaeffler and Bosch joining the round. The company says the money will fund mass manufacturing of its wheeled humanoid, a Beta fleet from the fourth quarter of 2026 and its KinetIQ AI software.
Partnership
London's Humanoid hands its HMND 01 robot to SAP's AI agent in a live car-parts plant, the first outside control of its KinetIQ stack
UK robotics start-up Humanoid said on 30 March 2026 that its wheeled HMND 01 Alpha completed a January to February proof of concept with SAP and Turkish seat maker Martur Fompak, taking orders from SAP's AI agent in live production. It was the first time an enterprise system controlled a Humanoid robot externally, through the four-layer KinetIQ AI framework the company unveiled on 5 February.
Business
Ocado pockets £261 million from Kroger site closures and cuts £150 million of costs to turn cash positive
Ocado Group's technology unit lifted revenue 13% to £561.2 million and its EBITDA margin to 25% in the year to November 2025, but Kroger closed three US fulfilment centres in January and paid £261 million in closure fees. The British automation group guided technology revenue down to about £500 million for FY26, plans to cut about £150 million of costs with significant job losses, and expects to turn cash flow positive in the second half.
Research
Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics 1.5 makes robots think before they act, and puts its planning model in developers' hands
Google DeepMind on 25 September 2025 introduced Gemini Robotics 1.5, a vision-language-action model that reasons in natural language before moving and transfers skills across robot bodies, alongside Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5, an embodied reasoning model opened to developers as a preview in the Gemini API. In its technical report, the pairing of the two cut total subtask failures on long-horizon tasks to 22% from 44.5% when a general Gemini 2.5 Flash model did the planning.
Product
Google DeepMind launches Gemini Robotics, turning Gemini 2.0 into a robot controller and signing Apptronik as its humanoid partner
Google DeepMind on 12 March 2025 introduced Gemini Robotics, a vision-language-action model built on Gemini 2.0 that issues motor commands, and Gemini Robotics-ER, a spatial reasoning model for robot makers. The lab said the action model more than doubles performance on a generalization benchmark against other leading models, named Apptronik as its humanoid partner and opened Gemini Robotics-ER to four trusted testers including Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics.