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Agility Robotics to go public through $2.5 billion SPAC merger

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Agility Robotics has agreed to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Churchill Capital Corp XI, in a deal that values the humanoid robotics developer at a pre-money equity value of $2.5 billion.

The transaction is expected to generate more than $620 million in gross proceeds, including approximately $200 million from a private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing led by Foxconn, alongside existing and new institutional investors.

Once the deal closes, the combined company is expected to operate as Agility and trade on a major North American stock exchange under the ticker symbol AGLT. [Read more…] about Agility Robotics to go public through $2.5 billion SPAC merger

Apptronik launches Robot Park to train Apollo humanoid robots with Google DeepMind

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AI-powered robotics company Apptronik has announced the opening of the newly expanded Robot Park, its flagship data collection and training facility for humanoid robots in Austin, Texas.

The facility in Austin anchors a growing global network of Robot Parks at customer and partner sites around the world, and the company plans to open new Robot Park locations in more cities soon.

Apptronik also unveiled Apollo 2, the current version of its humanoid robot platform, in both bipedal and wheeled-base configurations. Designed to learn real-world work through large-scale data collection, Apollo 2 enables Apptronik to gather diverse data across a wide range of tasks and environments. [Read more…] about Apptronik launches Robot Park to train Apollo humanoid robots with Google DeepMind

Agile Robots showcases force-control technology, humanoids, and physical AI at Robot Technology Japan event

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Agile Robots is using Robot Technology Japan (RTJ) 2026 to showcase a broad portfolio of industrial robotics, embodied AI, and humanoid technologies as the company continues its expansion in the global automation market.

The Munich-headquartered company is presenting its latest force-control systems, collaborative robots, humanoid platforms, and AI-driven automation technologies at the event in Nagoya, Japan.

While the exhibition includes a range of industrial automation solutions, Agile Robots is placing particular emphasis on what it describes as the convergence of artificial intelligence and physical-world robotics through advanced force control and physical AI. [Read more…] about Agile Robots showcases force-control technology, humanoids, and physical AI at Robot Technology Japan event

Lightwheel reports $100 million in Q1 orders for physical AI robotics infrastructure

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Lightwheel says it secured approximately $100 million in orders during the first quarter of 2026, reflecting what the company describes as a broader industry shift from robotics experimentation toward real-world deployment infrastructure.

Lightwheel is a robotics infrastructure company that develops simulation, synthetic data, evaluation, and deployment systems for training and scaling physical AI robots in real-world environments.

The company says the orders span simulation, synthetic data generation, evaluation systems, and deployment-oriented robotics infrastructure designed to support physical AI applications at industrial scale.

According to Lightwheel, the demand is being driven not simply by interest in robotics hardware or AI models, but by the growing need for systems capable of training, validating, and deploying robots reliably in real operating environments. [Read more…] about Lightwheel reports $100 million in Q1 orders for physical AI robotics infrastructure

Boston Dynamics integrates Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics model into Spot inspection platform

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Boston Dynamics has partnered with Google Cloud and Google DeepMind to integrate advanced artificial intelligence models into its industrial inspection platform, in a move the company says will significantly expand the capabilities of autonomous robots in real-world environments.

The collaboration brings Google’s Gemini and Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 into Boston Dynamics’ Orbit software, specifically its AI Visual Inspection (AIVI) and AIVI-Learning systems, which analyze images captured by the company’s Spot robot.

According to Boston Dynamics, the integration is designed to enable robots to move beyond basic detection tasks and instead perform more complex reasoning about their surroundings. [Read more…] about Boston Dynamics integrates Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics model into Spot inspection platform

Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind announce AI partnership focused on humanoid robots

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Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind announced a new artificial intelligence research partnership at CES 2026, aimed at integrating large-scale AI foundation models into humanoid robots.

The collaboration will focus on combining Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics AI models with Boston Dynamics’ next-generation Atlas platform. The companies said joint research using a new fleet of Atlas robots was expected to begin later this year, with work conducted across both organizations.

According to the companies, the partnership is intended to enable humanoid robots to perform a wider range of industrial tasks, with an initial focus on manufacturing applications, including automotive production. [Read more…] about Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind announce AI partnership focused on humanoid robots

Linux Foundation launches Newton with Disney, DeepMind and Nvidia to advance robotics AI

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The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source code, has launched Newton, an open source, GPU-accelerated, extensible physics engine that enables faster, more scalable simulations to lower the barrier to robotics research.

Co-developed by Disney Research, Google DeepMind, and Nvidia, Newton was designed and built by and for robotics developers to tackle the modern-day challenges of building generalist robots.

Built on Nvidia Warp and OpenUSD, Newton delivers GPU‑accelerated simulation with a flexible, extensible architecture that supports multiple physics solvers. [Read more…] about Linux Foundation launches Newton with Disney, DeepMind and Nvidia to advance robotics AI

After doing the laundry, Figure AI humanoid robot loads the dishwasher

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Helix, humanoid robotics specialist Figure AI’s Vision Language Action (VLA) model, has shown it can “adapt to dramatically different real-world challenges with nothing more than new data”.

After folding laundry and rearranging packages, Helix is now taking on another everyday task: loading a dishwasher.

At first glance, loading a dishwasher sounds like a simple task – just pick up each object and place it in the dishwasher. [Read more…] about After doing the laundry, Figure AI humanoid robot loads the dishwasher

Intrinsic and Google DeepMind unveil AI breakthrough for multi-robot orchestration

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Intrinsic, a robotics software company owned by Alphabet, parent company of Google, has announced a major advance in artificial intelligence that enables multiple industrial robots to work together in shared environments without colliding.

The development stems from long-term research led by Google DeepMind Robotics – now apparently rebranded as Gemini Robotics – in collaboration with Intrinsic and University College London.

Details of the project were published in Science Robotics under the title “RoboBallet: Planning for Multi-Robot Reaching with Graph Neural Networks and Reinforcement Learning”. [Read more…] about Intrinsic and Google DeepMind unveil AI breakthrough for multi-robot orchestration