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AllBreakingAnalysisFundingM&AResearchProductPolicyGlobalUSCNKRSG
May 22, 2026
PartnershipJP

Kawasaki opens a physical AI centre in San Jose with NVIDIA, Microsoft, Analog Devices and Fujitsu, starting with hospital robots

Kawasaki Heavy Industries opened the Kawasaki Physical AI Center San Jose on May 21 to develop AI-driven robot systems with NVIDIA, Analog Devices, Microsoft and Fujitsu, with healthcare and elderly care as the first focus. President Yasuhiko Hashimoto said the goal is a hospital one-stop solution covering patients from arrival to post-operative care. The move comes as Kawasaki plans to lift robot sales 24% this year, led by car body and semiconductor equipment lines.

3 sourcesKawasaki Heavy IndustriesNVIDIAFujitsuRobot Foundation ModelsEdge AI Compute
May 18, 2026
ResearchKR

Korea launches 50.4 billion won humanoid programme with KIST and three LG affiliates, putting solid-state batteries in robots

Korea's science ministry on May 18 started a five-year, 50.4 billion won programme to build a national AI humanoid platform led by KIST, with LG Electronics, LG AI Research and LG Energy Solution among the partners. The plan includes a vision, touch, language and action model, an all-solid-state battery for humanoids and a field test of at least 20 robots in care settings.

2 sourcesLG ElectronicsVLARobot Foundation Models
May 15, 2026
PartnershipJP

FANUC opens its robots to Google's Intrinsic and Gemini and deepens NVIDIA ties in a two-day physical AI push

FANUC said on May 13 that all of its robots will be fully supported on Intrinsic's enterprise software platform and that it has joined Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics trusted tester programme, after shipping more than 1,000 robots for physical AI uses since December. Two days later it expanded its NVIDIA work, linking ROBOGUIDE with Isaac Sim, training a dual-arm robot with Isaac GR00T N and moving a collision-avoidance system to Jetson Thor.

2 sourcesFANUCGoogleGoogle DeepMindVLARobot Foundation Models
May 7, 2026
BusinessUS

Symbotic turns a profit as revenue rises 23% and systems in deployment jump to 70

Symbotic reported fiscal second-quarter 2026 revenue of $676.5 million, up 23%, and net income of $9.4 million against a loss a year earlier, in results filed with the SEC on May 6, 2026. Adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $77.8 million, systems in deployment rose to 70 from 52 a quarter earlier, and the company guided third-quarter revenue to $700 million to $720 million.

1 sourceSymboticAutoStoreTeradyneFleet Orchestration SoftwareBattery Systems
May 1, 2026
BusinessUS

1X opens a 58,000-square-foot NEO factory in Hayward with capacity for 10,000 home humanoids a year and a goal of 100,000 by 2027

1X Technologies said on April 30, 2026 that its Hayward, California plant can build up to 10,000 NEO home humanoids a year and that it plans to scale toward more than 100,000 units annually by the end of 2027. The company makes its own motors, batteries, hands and structures in-house, said a year of production was booked within five days of opening preorders, and reaffirmed that first deliveries start in 2026.

3 sources1X TechnologiesFigure AIAgility RoboticsWorld ModelsTeleoperation
Apr 29, 2026
BusinessKR

Doosan Robotics sets 2028 for an industrial humanoid after NVIDIA talks, then rebuilds its Europe base in Frankfurt

Doosan Robotics said on April 29 that it will launch robot solutions on its Agentic Robot O/S in 2027 and an industrial humanoid in 2028, after hosting NVIDIA's Madison Huang to discuss linking that software with NVIDIA's simulation and training stack. In May it moved its European office to Frankfurt with local repair and training, and in June it unveiled the PalletizHD+ palletiser in Chicago.

4 sourcesDoosan RoboticsNVIDIARainbow RoboticsSim-to-Real TransferFleet Orchestration Software
Apr 29, 2026
BusinessDK

Universal Robots wins a German injunction against Chinese cobot rival Elite Robots as Teradyne's robotics sales reach $91 million

The Hamburg Regional Court on April 21, 2026 granted Teradyne Robotics a preliminary injunction barring Elite Robots Deutschland from distributing software that allegedly copies Universal Robots code. A week later Teradyne reported $91 million of first-quarter robotics revenue, about 7% of a record $1,282 million group total.

2 sourcesUniversal RobotsTeradyneNeura RoboticsImitation LearningFleet Orchestration Software
Apr 27, 2026
FundingDE

Stuttgart's Sereact raises US$110 million led by Headline to sell one robot brain for any machine, starting with the US

Sereact, the Stuttgart developer of the Cortex robot model, raised US$110 million in a Series B led by Headline on 27 April 2026, citing more than 1 billion production picks and one remote intervention in about 53,000. The money funds Cortex 2.0, which adds a world model to a vision-language-action model, and a first US office in Boston; Zalando later joined, lifting the round to US$116 million.

7 sourcesSereactBMW GroupAutoStoreVLAWorld Models
Apr 24, 2026
M&ACN

UBTech lifts its stake in Shenzhen-listed Fenglong to 43% as its RMB1.67 billion move into manufacturing closes

UBTech Robotics said on April 24 that it had completed the transfer of shares tendered in its partial offer for Zhejiang Fenglong Electric, taking its holding to 93,979,906 A shares, about 43.01% of the company. The Hong Kong-listed humanoid maker paid RMB17.72 a share in both steps of a deal worth up to RMB1.67 billion and later amended terms to nominate seven of eight Fenglong directors.

4 sourcesUBTECH RoboticsZhejiang Fenglong ElectricUnitree RoboticsElectric ActuatorsHydraulic Actuators
Apr 24, 2026
BusinessJP

FANUC posts record ¥857.8 billion sales as robot revenue rises 15% and China orders jump 55% in the final quarter

FANUC said on April 24 that sales for the year to March 2026 rose 7.6% to a record ¥857.8 billion and operating profit rose 15.7% to ¥183.8 billion, with robots now 44.1% of revenue. Fourth-quarter orders climbed 19.2% to ¥252.0 billion, led by a 55.2% jump in China, and the company guided for another record year while authorising a buyback of up to ¥50 billion.

5 sourcesFANUCYaskawa ElectricKawasaki Heavy IndustriesFleet Orchestration SoftwareEdge AI Compute
Apr 23, 2026
BusinessNO

AutoStore nearly doubles first-quarter revenue to $165.8 million as adjusted EBITDA margin jumps to 44%

AutoStore reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $165.8 million on April 23, 2026, up 92.9% from an unusually weak quarter a year earlier, with order intake up 27.0% to $179.4 million. Adjusted EBITDA more than tripled to $72.9 million, but the Norwegian cube storage maker warned that uncertainty over global trade could make customers more cautious and limit near-term visibility.

4 sourcesAutoStoreSymboticTeradyneFleet Orchestration SoftwareBattery Systems
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 23, 2026
ResearchJP

Sony AI's Ace becomes the first robot to beat elite table tennis players under official rules, Nature paper shows

Sony AI's autonomous table tennis system Ace won three of five matches against elite players and lost both matches against two Japanese T.League professionals in April 2025 trials, according to a paper published in Nature on April 22, 2026. The robot combines event-based vision sensors from Sony Semiconductor Solutions, an eight-axis arm and reinforcement learning policies trained in simulation, and reaches a perception latency of 10.2 milliseconds.

2 sourcesSonyFANUCYaskawa ElectricRLSim-to-Real Transfer
Apr 19, 2026
PartnershipDE

Wandelbots, SCHUNK and EY team up on NVIDIA-based physical AI for Germany's Mittelstand as Gessmann brings NOVA to Hannover Messe

Dresden software firm Wandelbots, gripper and automation maker SCHUNK and consultancy EY said on April 19, 2026 they would combine SCHUNK's GROW automation cell, Wandelbots' NOVA platform and NVIDIA Omniverse into a standardised physical AI offer for mid-sized European manufacturers. The same day, W. Gessmann GmbH said it would show NOVA-based mobile robots at Hannover Messe.

4 sourcesWandelbotsNVIDIANeura RoboticsSim-to-Real TransferFleet Orchestration Software
Apr 19, 2026
IndustryCN

A humanoid robot wins Beijing's half marathon in 50 minutes 26 seconds, 17 minutes ahead of the fastest human

The 2026 Beijing E-Town humanoid half marathon on April 19 drew more than 100 robot teams from 13 provinces, against five provinces a year earlier, and about 40% of robots navigated on their own. The winning robot, Lightning of the Qitian Dasheng team, finished the 21.0975-kilometre course in 50:26 while the men's human winner ran 1:07:47, according to the Beijing municipal government.

1 sourceUnitree RoboticsElectric ActuatorsBattery Systems
Apr 17, 2026
ProductCN

AgiBot says 2025 revenue topped RMB1 billion as it launches the Expedition A3 humanoid and a robot rental network

Shanghai-based AgiBot told its 2026 partner conference on April 17 that revenue grew from RMB300,000 in 2023 to more than RMB1 billion in 2025, and that its ten-thousandth robot had rolled off the line this year. The company launched four hardware lines including the full-size Expedition A3, six models and a five-year ecosystem programme worth more than RMB2 billion.

2 sourcesAgiBotUBTECH RoboticsUnitree RoboticsRobot Foundation ModelsBattery 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