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Every funding round, launch and paper, as it's reported.

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AllBreakingAnalysisFundingM&AResearchProductPolicyGlobalUSCNKRSG
Apr 23, 2026
BusinessUS

Tesla will retire Model S and X lines in Fremont for an Optimus line designed for 1 million robots a year, and plans a 10 million-unit line in Texas

Tesla said in its first-quarter 2026 shareholder update that its first-generation Optimus line, designed for 1 million humanoid robots a year, will replace the Model S and Model X lines at its Fremont factory. It is also preparing Gigafactory Texas for a second-generation line designed for long-term annual capacity of 10 million robots, while reporting revenue of $22.4 billion and $44.7 billion in cash and investments.

0 sourcesTesla1X TechnologiesAgility RoboticsElectric ActuatorsBattery Systems
Apr 16, 2026
ResearchUS

Toyota Research Institute's blind trials in Science Robotics find multitask robot models learn new tasks with a fraction of the data

An 82-author team from Toyota Research Institute, Cornell University and MIT reported in Science Robotics on April 15, 2026 that multitask large behavior models, built on diffusion policy, outperform single-task baselines in blind, randomized trials and need far less task-specific data. The preprint version describes about 1,700 hours of robot demonstrations across more than 500 tasks and 1,800 controlled real-world trials.

3 sourcesToyota Research InstituteBoston DynamicsPhysical IntelligenceImitation LearningRobot Foundation Models
Apr 15, 2026
M&AUS

Skild AI buys Zebra's former Fetch Robotics unit for $20 million, five years after Zebra paid $301 million for it

Skild AI said on April 15, 2026 that it had acquired the robotics division of Zebra Technologies, the business Zebra bought as Fetch Robotics in 2021. Zebra's quarterly SEC filing shows the sale closed on March 27 for $20 million in cash, escrow and a minority stake in Skild, against the $301 million Zebra recorded when it bought Fetch.

2 sourcesSkild AIZebra TechnologiesNVIDIARobot Foundation ModelsFleet Orchestration Software
Apr 15, 2026
ProductUS

Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 teaches robots to read gauges, lifting accuracy to 93% with Boston Dynamics' Spot as first showcase

Google DeepMind released Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 on April 14, 2026, an embodied reasoning model built on Gemini 3.0 Flash and offered as a preview through the Gemini API and Google AI Studio. DeepMind said the model reads industrial instruments correctly 86% of the time, or 93% with an agentic zoom and code execution step, against 23% for ER 1.5. Boston Dynamics is using the capability for Spot facility inspections.

2 sourcesGoogle DeepMindGoogleBoston DynamicsRobot Foundation ModelsVLA
Apr 3, 2026
ResearchUS

Generalist's GEN-1 robot model reaches 99% success on trained tasks with about an hour of robot data, pretrained without any robot data

Generalist AI released GEN-1 on April 2, 2026, an embodied foundation model pretrained on more than 500,000 hours of human physical interaction data captured with wearable devices and no robot data. The company reports 99% average success on tasks where its previous model reached 64%, about one hour of robot data per task and task times roughly three times faster than the prior state of the art; the results are the company's own and have not been independently replicated.

4 sourcesGeneralist AIPhysical IntelligenceSkild AIRobot Foundation ModelsImitation Learning
Mar 31, 2026
FundingUS

Saronic raises $1.75 billion at a $9.25 billion valuation to turn uncrewed warships into a shipbuilding business

Austin-based Saronic Technologies said on March 31, 2026 it had closed a $1.75 billion Series D led by Kleiner Perkins at a $9.25 billion valuation, about 2.3 times the $4 billion set in its February 2025 Series C. The autonomous surface vessel maker is putting shipyards at the centre of its plan, including a $300 million expansion in Louisiana and a planned next-generation yard called Port Alpha.

5 sourcesSaronic TechnologiesShield AIFleet Orchestration SoftwareEdge AI Compute
Mar 26, 2026
FundingUS

Shield AI raises $2 billion at a $12.7 billion valuation and buys Aechelon, the simulation house behind the Pentagon's combat test range

Shield AI is raising $1.5 billion in Series G equity led by Advent International at a $12.7 billion post-money valuation, plus $500 million of fixed-return preferred equity from Blackstone funds. The San Diego company is also buying Aechelon Technology, the simulation provider for the Pentagon's Joint Simulation Environment, to train its Hivemind AI pilot in synthetic worlds.

8 sourcesShield AISaronic TechnologiesSynthetic Data GenerationSim-to-Real Transfer
Mar 25, 2026
M&AUS

Amazon buys Fauna Robotics, maker of the 107 cm Sprout humanoid, less than two months after the robot's launch

Fauna Robotics said on 24 March 2026 that it had joined Amazon and would operate as an Amazon company, keeping its Sprout humanoid on sale and its customers supported; no terms were disclosed. The deal gives the operator of more than 1 million warehouse robots a small, safety-first humanoid used by Disney, Boston Dynamics, NYU and UC San Diego, and a team drawn from Google DeepMind and CTRL-labs.

8 sourcesFauna RoboticsAmazonSundayTeleoperationEdge AI Compute
Mar 17, 2026
ProductUS

NVIDIA previews GR00T N2, betting robots should predict video before they move

NVIDIA used its GTC keynote on March 16, 2026 to preview Isaac GR00T N2, a robot foundation model built on its DreamZero world action model research that it says succeeds at new tasks in new environments more than twice as often as leading VLA models. It also put the 3-billion-parameter GR00T N1.7 into commercial early access and announced Cosmos 3 and Isaac Lab 3.0, with N2 due by the end of 2026.

5 sourcesNVIDIAAgiBotLG ElectronicsWorld ModelsRobot Foundation Models
Mar 13, 2026
FundingUS

Sunday raises $165 million at a $1.15 billion valuation to move its glove-trained Memo robot from demos into homes

Sunday, the Silicon Valley developer of the Memo household robot, said on 12 March 2026 that it had raised an oversubscribed $165 million Series B at a $1.15 billion valuation, led by Coatue, with Coatue's Thomas Laffont joining the board. The company trains Memo on data from people wearing its Skill Capture Glove instead of teleoperating robots, plans an invite-only home beta from the autumn and expects to ship at scale in 2027-2028.

4 sourcesSunday1X TechnologiesSkild AIRobot Foundation ModelsImitation Learning
Mar 12, 2026
FundingUS

Rivian spinout Mind Robotics raises $500 million Series A, and Rivian books a $506 million gain on its stake

Mind Robotics, the industrial AI robotics company founded and led by Rivian chief executive RJ Scaringe, said on March 11, 2026 that Accel and Andreessen Horowitz co-led a $500 million Series A, about four months after a $115 million seed. Rivian's filings show it deconsolidated the start-up in March, valued its remaining 37.6% at about $569 million using the Series A share price and recorded a $506 million gain, which by MEKAWIRE arithmetic implies an equity value near $1.51 billion.

9 sourcesMind RoboticsRivianSkild AIRobot Foundation ModelsImitation Learning
Mar 10, 2026
FundingUS

Rhoda AI leaves stealth with a $450 million Series A to run factory robots on a model that learns from internet video

Palo Alto start-up Rhoda AI emerged on 10 March 2026 with a $450 million Series A from Khosla Ventures, Mayfield, Temasek and six other institutions, plus John Doerr. Its Direct Video Action model predicts video of a task and converts it into robot actions, and the company says new tasks can need as little as ten hours of teleoperation data. No lead investor, valuation or customer was disclosed.

6 sourcesRhoda AISkild AIMind RoboticsRobot Foundation ModelsWorld Models
Feb 25, 2026
PartnershipUS

Physical Intelligence pitches its π models as a shared robot brain, with Weave and Ultra as first proof at 96.4% autonomy

Physical Intelligence on February 24, 2026 laid out its plan to sell general-purpose robot models as a ready-made ‘physical intelligence layer’ for other robot makers, the way developers call language models through an API. It named home robot maker Weave and warehouse robot maker Ultra as partners, reporting a full packing shift at 96.4% autonomy and a 50% cut in laundry-folding interventions, but gave no pricing or access terms.

5 sourcesPhysical IntelligenceWeave RoboticsUltraVLARobot Foundation Models
Feb 11, 2026
FundingUS

Apptronik raises $520 million Series A-X at triple its earlier valuation, taking the round past $935 million as it readies a new Apollo

Austin humanoid maker Apptronik said on 11 February 2026 that it had closed a $520 million Series A-X extension priced at three times its Series A valuation, lifting total Series A funding above $935 million. John Deere, AT&T Ventures and Qatar Investment Authority joined returning backers B Capital, Google, Mercedes-Benz and PEAK6, and the company said the money will pay for Apollo production, training and data facilities and a new robot due in 2026.

5 sourcesApptronikGoogleGoogle DeepMindVLARobot Foundation Models
Feb 5, 2026
BusinessUS

Symbotic lifts revenue 29% to $630 million and swings to profit, but Walmart still supplies 86% of sales

Symbotic reported fiscal first-quarter revenue of $629.9 million on 4 February 2026, up 29% from a year earlier, with net income of $13.4 million and adjusted EBITDA of $66.9 million. Its backlog stood at $22.3 billion and it guided second-quarter revenue to $650 million to $670 million. Walmart accounted for 85.6% of revenue, and a change in stock-compensation accounting added $9.3 million to profit.

5 sourcesSymboticAutoStoreTeradyneFleet Orchestration Software
Feb 4, 2026
FundingUS

Bedrock Robotics raises $270 million at a $1.75 billion valuation to take excavators operator-less in 2026

Bedrock Robotics, founded in 2024 by former Waymo engineers, raised a $270 million Series B co-led by CapitalG and Valor Atreides AI Fund, taking total funding past $350 million. The San Francisco company retrofits existing excavators with autonomy and is targeting its first operator-less deployments this year, a month after Caterpillar unveiled its own construction autonomy line.

4 sourcesBedrock RoboticsNVIDIASkild AIFleet Orchestration Software
Feb 4, 2026
FundingUS

Machina Labs raises $124 million Series C from Toyota and Lockheed Martin venture arms to build a 50-cell robotic metal-forming plant

Los Angeles-based Machina Labs closed a $124 million Series C on 4 February 2026 with Woven Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Balerion Space Ventures and the Strategic Development Fund. The money funds a 200,000-square-foot US factory for up to 50 RoboCraftsman cells making defense and aerospace structures. No lead investor or valuation was disclosed.

4 sourcesMachina LabsNVIDIARobCo
Feb 3, 2026
BusinessUS

Teradyne's robotics arm shrinks 16% to $308 million in 2025 and restructures about 400 jobs as AI test demand lifts the group

Teradyne said its Universal Robots and MiR unit booked $89 million of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025, up about 19% on the third quarter but below $98 million a year earlier. Full year robotics revenue fell to $308 million from $365 million, and restructuring in the unit affected about 400 employees, while group revenue rose 44% in the quarter on AI chip test demand.

3 sourcesTeradyneUniversal RobotsABB Robotics
Jan 29, 2026
BusinessUS

Tesla sets end-2026 start for its first Optimus line and a 1 million-robot capacity goal as car profits shrink

Tesla said in its fourth-quarter 2025 update that it will unveil a mass-production Gen 3 Optimus in the first quarter of 2026 and start production on a first line before year end, with eventual capacity of 1 million robots a year. The plan came as 2025 net income fell 46% to $3.79 billion and Tesla agreed to invest about $2 billion in xAI.

2 sourcesTeslaFigure AISkild AIDexterous ManipulationElectric Actuators
Jan 28, 2026
ResearchUS

Figure's Helix 02 hands a humanoid's whole body to one neural network, deleting 109,504 lines of control code

Figure AI on Jan. 27, 2026 released Helix 02, a robot foundation model that runs a humanoid from camera pixels and fingertip touch down to joint commands at 1 kHz, replacing 109,504 lines of hand-written C++ with a 10-million-parameter learned controller. The company showed a Figure 03 unloading and reloading a dishwasher across a full kitchen in a four-minute, 61-action run it says had no resets and no teleoperation.

6 sourcesFigure AIPhysical IntelligenceNVIDIARobot Foundation ModelsVLA