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US startup Antioch raises $4.25 million to build simulation infrastructure to the robotics industry

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A team of Stanford alumni led by former Tesla Autopilot engineer Harry Mellsop, former Deep Grey Research head of product Alex Langshur, former Google Deepmind engineer Colton Swingle, and former Meta Reality Labs researcher Collin Schlager, has raised $4.25 million to democratise access to advanced robotics development. 

The pre-seed round was led by A*, with support from Abstract Ventures, MaC Venture Capital, Box Group, as well as angels Adrian Macneil, the CEO of AI robotics company, Foxglove, Shyam Sankar, the CTO of Palantir, and NZ investment firm Icehouse Ventures.

Founded in early 2025 and headquartered in New York, Antioch is solving one of autonomy’s hardest problems: safely validating AI-driven systems that operate in the physical world. [Read more…] about US startup Antioch raises $4.25 million to build simulation infrastructure to the robotics industry

Awkward question: What will be the ‘killer app’ for humanoid robots?

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Tesla’s latest humanoid demonstration – a kung fu routine performed by its Optimus robot for actor Jared Leto – was clearly designed to impress.

But, as dramatic and as thought-provoking as it was, the spectacle raised an awkward question: what will be the “killer app” for humanoid robots?

“Killer app” is a phrase to mean the defining use case that makes a technology indispensable. In every major technology shift, there’s been a defining use case – a killer app – that turned novelty into necessity. For early personal computers, it was spreadsheets – programs like VisiCalc and later Excel that justified owning a machine running DOS. [Read more…] about Awkward question: What will be the ‘killer app’ for humanoid robots?

Nvidia launches new open-source models and simulation tools to accelerate robotics research

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Nvidia has unveiled a suite of new open technologies designed to speed up the development and deployment of advanced robotics, including humanoid systems. The announcement was made alongside updates to the company’s Isaac robotics platform.

At the center of the release is the Newton Physics Engine, an open-source, GPU-accelerated simulator codeveloped with Google DeepMind and Disney Research.

Now available in Nvidia Isaac Lab and managed by the Linux Foundation, Newton is built to handle the complex balance and motion challenges of humanoid robots. [Read more…] about Nvidia launches new open-source models and simulation tools to accelerate robotics research