RobotHOT posts

Amazon.com Inc said it plans to invest more than $100 million to build an advanced robotics manufacturing plant in Greenwood, Indiana, with production expected to begin in 2028. The facility will make warehouse robots and supporting automation equipment for Amazon’s North American fulfillment network. The plant will integrate precision component machining, robotic welding, automated powder coating and final assembly, and will rely on AWS cloud and smart manufacturing systems, Amazon said. All completed robots and components produced there will be supplied to Amazon’s North American fulfillment centers and robotics operations network.

Researchers at Caltech and Stanford have unveiled HomeBody, a system that gives GPT Astra persistent spatial memory and the ability to execute compound humanoid actions for long-horizon tasks. In a kitchen demo, a Unitree G1 robot guided by Astra cleaned the room and retrieved remembered items from ambiguous requests. The team said the system requires no environment-specific training or additional policy learning. HomeBody replaces the trained intermediate VLA layer in conventional three-part architectures—System2 VLM for vision and instructions, System1 VLA for control commands, and System0 for coordinated motion. As frontier models such as Astra improve, the researchers argue trained VLAs are no longer necessary and System2 can directly manage reusable motion skills. A plug-and-play VLM calls a composable skill library....

SiMa.ai, a leader in Physical AI, announced $150 million in Series C financing, bringing the total capital raised to $500 million and valuing the company at $1.45 billion. The round was co-led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify, with participation from Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Maverick Capital, +ND Capital, Point72 and StepStone Group. AllianceBernstein, Baron Capital, J.P. Morgan, and the State of Michigan also joined the round as new investors. The global market for Physical AI devices, including robotics, automotive, and drones, is set to explode with cumulative shipments projected to hit 145 million units by 2035, according to Counterpoint Research. This surge marks AI’s transition from software applications into tangible, real-world consumer and industrial hardware,...

Chinese consumer-grade embodied AI company Knowin, stylized as knowin, said it has raised several hundred million yuan in an angel+++ funding round led by a JD.com-linked fund. Loyal Valley Capital, Nanshan Strategic Emerging Investment and Walden International participated, the company said. Knowin has completed five funding rounds since it was founded in August 2025, raising more than 1 billion yuan in total. Its previous 500 million yuan round was announced on Aug. 10, just 49 days before the latest disclosure. Knowin is moving its GLOW generative embodied AI model from a “strong generalization” technical architecture toward a “teach once, learn immediately” capability that ordinary users can directly perceive. The former targets consumer-grade deployment, while the latter seeks to change how...

U.S. embedded Physical AI chip company iMa.ai said it raised $150 million in an oversubscribed Series C, valuing it at $1.45 billion post-money and lifting total equity funding to over $500 million. The round was co-led by Fidelity Management & Research and Amplify, with Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Maverick Capital, +ND Capital, Point72 and StepStone participating. New investors included AllianceBernstein, Baron Capital, J.P. Morgan and the State of Michigan. Proceeds will scale Palette Neat, which iMa.ai calls the industry’s first agentic software environment for Physical AI, and fund next-generation hardware including ML IP, chiplets and SoCs. The company aims to deliver dedicated Physical AI silicon with 1,000 dense TOPS in the first half of 2028.

 Chinese general-purpose embodied AI company Sudu Technology said it has completed a new funding round of more than 1 billion yuan ($140 million). The round was co-led by Shanghai Guotou Xiandao, Guotai Haitong and Futeng Capital, with participation from Daohe Long-term, Dongfeng Asset, China Development Bank Financial, Longmafeng and Liangtu Zhice, alongside existing shareholders including Xiaomi. Sudu said the proceeds will mainly fund full-stack technology development and large-scale validation in real industrial scenarios. It plans to accelerate deployment of its embodied AI systems across multiple industries and at benchmark clients’ production lines and workstations, testing the transfer, long-term stability and reuse of a single general-purpose intelligence base in real manufacturing environments, as it seeks to move from lab prototypes to...

On X, a user asked Elon Musk whether “SpaceXAI” could be renamed “SpaceXSI.” Musk replied: “Yes, we will make that change.” He also said: “No longer call it AI, call it SI, that’s better.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the benefits of artificial intelligence are enough for humanity to accept some risks, arguing the technology should remain widely open to the public rather than be tightly monopolized or centrally controlled by a few labs. “We think the world should accept certain negative events for the benefits of this technology and the autonomy people have,” Altman said in an interview.

Maven Robotics said it completed a $100 million Series A round jointly invested by UAE investment firm Shorooq and Presight, a listed company under G42, through Presight–Shorooq AI and Bedaya Funds. RoboStrategy, LocalGlobe, Vine Ventures and XTX Ventures also participated. Founded in 2024, Maven Robotics focuses on intelligent industrial robots for logistics and manufacturing. The proceeds will mainly fund the build-out of a fleet of about 250 third-generation robots and the design of a fourth-generation model, while expanding from palletizing and bin handling into broader material-handling scenarios.

A robotics enthusiast accidentally unpacked Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) Android app package and discovered unreleased designs for the company’s third-generation Optimus humanoid robot, according to a now-deleted post on X. User @wholemars said in a post on Tuesday, which has since been deleted, that he extracted the material from Tesla’s app. The files included renderings labeled “gen3” and side-by-side images of Optimus 2.5 and Gen 3 to distinguish the two generations. The images were not concept sketches or fan renderings, but internal material Tesla embedded in a publicly distributed app package, according to the post. According to the leaked images, the Gen 3 Optimus appears more streamlined and designed for factory assembly lines rather than the laboratory. Compared with Optimus 2.5,...