XPeng – previously known only for electric cars – has raised more than $900 million for its robotics business at a post-money valuation of more than $6.3 billion, as the Chinese electric vehicle maker prepares to begin mass production of its IRON humanoid robot. The company says the financing is the largest single-round private capital […]

Japanese technology giant NEC’s corporate venture capital fund has invested in US-based robotics startup Dexmate, developer of the VEGA humanoid robot and an integrated physical AI development platform. The investment was made through the NEC Orchestrating Future Fund (NOFF), with NEC and Dexmate planning to explore opportunities to deploy physical AI technologies across a range […]

X Square Robot is showcasing its full portfolio of embodied AI technologies at the World Robot Conference 2026 in Beijing, presenting applications ranging from logistics automation and dexterous manipulation to household robotics and AI training-data collection. The Shenzhen-based company is exhibiting at booth C107 during WRC, which runs from August 19 to 23, bringing together […]

Faraday Future Intelligent Electric, a California-based global embodied AI ecosystem company, has announced its support for an orderly exit by AIxC Holdings, of which FF is the majority and controlling shareholder, from its digital asset treasury strategy. AIxC intends to focus on physical AI and robot sharing and rental, operations, and commercialization. The two companies […]

Hexagon Robotics and Schaeffler, a motion technology company, has announced the next milestone in their strategic collaboration as AEON enters Schaeffler’s Humanoid Gym in Germany, marking the next step towards the planned deployment of at least 1,000 AEON humanoids in the coming years. The Humanoid Gym provides a Train-Validate-Deploy model in a dedicated industrial environment. Schaeffler […]

Scientists have developed a hybrid robotic skin that combines electrical impedance tomography with pneumatic pressure sensing in an effort to improve force detection across large areas of a humanoid robot, as highlighted by RoboSkin. Described in a preprint published in May 2026, the system uses electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to determine where contact occurs, while four […]

As robots become more intelligent, autonomous and connected, much of the attention naturally falls on increasingly powerful AI models. But underneath those models is an increasingly complex collection of sensors, processors, control systems and security hardware that must operate reliably – often within strict limits on power consumption, size and heat. Lattice Semiconductor is one […]

South Korean electronics giant LG is developing a next-generation bipedal humanoid robot built using Nvidia Isaac GR00T, Nvidia’s open reasoning humanoid foundation model, for a public unveiling in the first quarter of next year. LG and Nvidia signed a memorandum of understanding on August 13 at Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, with chairman and […]

Unitree Robotics’ initial public offering has reportedly been oversubscribed more than 5,000 times as investors scramble for shares in one of China’s best-known humanoid robot manufacturers. The Hangzhou-based company priced its IPO at 150.8 yuan ($22.4) per share, raising approximately $900 million and giving Unitree a valuation of around $9 billion, according to CNBC. Demand […]

Motion technology company Schaeffler is expanding its humanoid robotics product portfolio and bringing formed strain wave gearboxes to market. Strain wave gearboxes are key components in actuators which make up around half of the total costs of manufacturing a humanoid. Strain wave gearboxes can precisely transmit motion with a high torque capacity by utilizing a […]

Sony has filed a US patent application for a robotic hand featuring a human-like opposable thumb, providing another intriguing indication of the electronics giant’s continuing research into humanoid and embodied robotics. The application, US 2026/0225261 A1, was published by the US Patent and Trademark Office on August 6 and describes a robot hand designed to […]

Whatever happened to ASIMO? Honda’s famous humanoid robot (pictured below with what we believe is an actual human female) disappeared from public view several years ago, just before an extraordinary new wave of humanoid development swept through the robotics industry. But Honda didn’t abandon humanoid robotics. Instead, much of the technology and expertise accumulated through […]

The rapidly expanding global robotics industry could require 363 TWh of electricity annually by 2035 – equivalent to the yearly consumption of around 35 million average US households – according to new research from Wood Mackenzie. The finding arrives as energy capacity planning is already under pressure from AI data centres, making robotics a second […]

While generative AI has dominated much of the technology debate in recent years, the next major phase of development may increasingly involve AI systems that can perceive, interact with and act in the physical world. The IEEE’s new Technology Megatrends 2030 report identifies physical AI and robotics as one of the areas with the greatest […]

Hanyang University ERICA researchers have developed a vertically integrated dual-gate transistor design, which could give robots ‘reliable touch sensing and high density, large-area integration’.  Conventional tribotronic devices, that convert mechanical stimuli like touch into electrical signals, offer fixed sensitivity and pose challenges in large-area integration. In a new study, researchers have developed a new vertically […]

Chinese robotics company Unitree has priced its initial public offering at a valuation of approximately $9 billion, becoming the country’s first mainland-listed humanoid robot manufacturer and highlighting growing investor interest in AI-powered robotics despite rising geopolitical tensions. The Hangzhou-based company said it has priced its Shanghai STAR Market IPO at 150.8 yuan ($22.34) per share, […]

Chinese robotics company Unitree Technology expects strong revenue growth in the first half of 2026 as demand for humanoid robots and embodied AI continues to increase, according to reports by DigiTimes and AFP. The company expects first-half revenue of about CNY1.1 billion ($156 million), representing year-on-year growth of between 35.6 percent and 45.4 percent, the […]

China has threatened to retaliate against new US restrictions on foreign-produced humanoid robots, warning that the measures will damage economic and trade relations between the world’s two largest economies. The response comes after the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added foreign-produced advanced robotic devices, including humanoids and quadrupeds, to its Covered List, preventing new models […]

AGIBOT says its WITA-Omni Preview multimodal foundation model has achieved the highest score on the Daily-Omni audio-visual reasoning benchmark, outperforming models from Alibaba, Google and ByteDance. According to the company, WITA-Omni Preview recorded an average accuracy of 85.21 percent on the third-party benchmark, ahead of Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview and Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite. […]

Google DeepMind has launched Gemini Robotics 2, a new suite of AI models designed to give humanoid and other robots greater autonomy through whole-body control, advanced dexterity and multi-robot collaboration. The system is being demonstrated on Apptronik‘s Apollo 2 humanoid robot, which Google DeepMind says can now perform full-body autonomous movements, including walking, crouching, bending […]