AGIBOT, a pioneer in the global general-purpose AI robotics industry, is showcasing its latest robot portfolio at IFA 2026, led by its third-generation full-size humanoid, the AGIBOT A3, with applications spanning retail, industrial operations and commercial cleaning. The showcase also features the AGIBOT X2 Ultra on IFA’s “Robots on the Runway,” a new TÜV Rheinland certification for the AGIBOT A-Series, and a joint showcase with European partner Tekpoint as AGIBOT expands its commercial footprint in Europe. AGIBOT A3 Leads a Multi-Robot Showcase At the center of AGIBOT’s showcase is the A3, a 173-centimeter, 55-kilogram full-size humanoid integrating locomotion, interaction and manipulation intelligence. The robot combines dynamic mobility, multimodal interaction, hot-swappable batteries and coordinated multi-robot operation. The AGIBOT X2 Ultra will...
PrimeBOT, a consumer embodied AI brand under SWANCOR, made its IFA debut on Thursday with two “personal robots” aimed at bringing robotics into households, a move the company said prioritises affordability and user engagement over industrial-grade performance. The T1 and Q1 models are designed to be compact, lightweight, and priced to lower the barrier for home adoption, according to the company. At its booth, European parents were observed allowing children to interact freely with the robots, reflecting confidence in their safety and approachable design. Beyond emotional companionship, the robots are positioned for practical daily uses including camping tracking, towing carts, and load-carrying, the company said. Modular design and co-creation draw crowds PrimeBOT’s booth, themed “PrimeGallery,” features a multi-language photo wall...
Chinese general embodied AI robotics developer Simple AI has closed a multi-hundred-million-yuan Pre-A financing round backed by investor Kexi Capital and other institutional backers. Positioned as an AI-native embodied intelligence system provider, the firm has launched an in-house data production engine that has processed over 20,000 hours of robotic scenario data. From August 19 to 23, its new-generation service robot Xiaopu successfully completed a wide range of household workflows and fine manipulation tasks in hotel settings, demonstrating steady progress in real-world embodied AI deployment.
Chinese robotics firms LEJU Robot and Heyman have jointly launched a scene-oriented solution centred on a general-purpose humanoid robot body and a multi-fingered dexterous hand, aiming to eliminate the need for custom end-effector swaps across diverse industrial tasks. The system addresses common pain points such as trade-offs between payload and precision, low gesture-development efficiency, and difficult redeployment, the companies said. The integrated dexterous hand features a variable-configuration design that supports seven plus grip modes – including two-finger pinch, internal expansion, enveloping grasp, and two-handed hold – on the same hardware. It delivers a payload of at least 24 kg and a repeated positioning accuracy of ≤0.03 mm, outperforming the industry norm of 0.2 mm. This allows a single manipulator to...
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed during a recent podcast appearance that the company will develop its own humanoid robot hardware alongside specialized robots for data center operations. The firm has upgraded its former world-simulation project into OpenAI Robotics, targeting short-term robotic solutions to support infrastructure workers while pursuing the long-term vision of ubiquitous personal robots for everyday users. OpenAI also plans to launch its first screen-free portable AI device as early as 2027. Featuring a donut-shaped form factor, the upcoming gadget is expected to retail for more than $300.
The 2026 IFA consumer electronics trade fair kicked off at the Berlin Exhibition Grounds on Friday, running through Sept 8, with an expanded content creation zone and a new ICC Innovation Dialogue stage highlighting AI future tech, smart home, and mobility. Founded in 1924, the event is one of the world’s longest-running consumer electronics exhibitions. This year’s edition underscores the industry’s pivot toward AI-driven applications and cross-sector integration.
Lyte, a U.S.-based physical AI perception infrastructure startup, has raised $165 million in a Series C funding round, valuing the company at $1.6 billion post-money, the company said. The round was led by Maverick Silicon, with participation from existing investors including Fidelity Management & Research, Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, and Ora Global. Proceeds will be used to boost sensor chip production, scale its LyteVision integrated perception platform, and expand its workforce. Founded in 2021, Lyte emerged from stealth in January this year and had previously raised approximately $107 million. The company develops chips, multimodal sensors, and spatial perception software to help robots navigate environments more safely. Its flagship unified spatial intelligence platform, LyteGalaxy, integrates sensors, compute, software, and algorithms into...
Humanoid robotics company Figure has signed a multi-year strategic partnership with Nscale, a UK-based AI cloud infrastructure provider, to deploy up to 100,000 GPUs on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform. The initial compute commitment is valued at $3.5 billion, with both parties intending to scale the deal to over $6 billion. First deployment is targeted for the second half of 2027 at Nscale’s data center in Barstow, Texas. As part of the agreement, Nscale will also make a strategic equity investment in Figure and become its preferred compute provider. The two companies will explore using humanoid robots to expand Nscale’s own supply chain operations. Nscale, which counts NVIDIA as an investor following its participation in the firm’s Pre-Series C SAFE...
During the 2026 China International Big Data Industry Expo, the Shanghai Robotics Industrial Technology Research Institute, together with Maniformer and other industry leaders, issued a joint initiative on data quality and standards for the robotics sector, aiming to improve data quality, refine industry norms, and foster a shared ecosystem. The initiative targets key challenges in embodied intelligence and humanoid robotics, rallying consensus around three pillars: establishing unified data standards, sharing compliant high-quality data resources, and driving innovative commercial applications.
Astribot, a Chinese robotics startup, has unveiled SmoothRL, an online reinforcement learning framework designed to train policies during asynchronous execution – a growing reality for embodied AI deployments where inference and action run at different frequencies. The work, led by the company’s foundation model team, addresses a fundamental mismatch: when a robot receives new action chunks before previous ones finish, conventional RL that updates on entire chunks ends up crediting or blaming actions that were never actually executed. The framework partitions each action chunk into three regions – committed (already fixed), execution (actually performed), and discarded (overwritten by later inference) – and backpropagates gradients only through the execution region. This ensures that optimisation mirrors the robot’s real experience. SmoothRL also...
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