ROBOTNESS
Analysis

ROBOTNESS Intelligence

The analysis under each story: why it matters, how the rivals compare, what a valuation implies and what to watch next. Sourced the same way as the facts.

Latest analysis

All stories on the Wire
1 hour ago
AnalysisUS

Skild AI and Figure top the largest humanoid and embodied-AI funding rounds of 2025-2026, as money moves from robot bodies to robot brains

Skild AI's $1.4 billion Series C, led by SoftBank, and Figure AI's $1 billion Series C, led by Parkway Venture Capital, are the two largest humanoid and embodied-AI rounds in ROBOTNESS's verified records since January 2025, and together make up 41% of the $5.86 billion disclosed across 22 rounds. Humanoid makers took 70% of disclosed money in 2025, but developers of robot foundation models have taken 71% in 2026 so far, and NVIDIA joined seven rounds without leading one.

3 sourcesSkild AIFigure AIApptronikRobot Foundation ModelsWorld Models
3 hours ago
IndustryUS

What is a vision-language-action (VLA) model, and who is building them?

A vision-language-action (VLA) model is one neural network that reads camera images and a plain-language instruction and outputs a robot's next motor commands, built by training a vision-language model on robot demonstrations. Google DeepMind, Physical Intelligence, NVIDIA, Figure AI, Skild AI and AgiBot lead, and the commercial race now turns on the cost of action data rather than model design.

11 sourcesGoogle DeepMindPhysical IntelligenceNVIDIAVLARobot Foundation Models
5 hours ago
ProductCH

ANYbotics launches Shift, pitching its inspection robots on the maintenance tickets they create

Swiss legged-robot maker ANYbotics has released Shift, a four-module platform that plans robot inspection rounds, analyses the readings and pushes findings into plant systems such as SAP and IBM Maximo. The company says Shift already analyses more than 120,000 inspections a month across over 1,000 industrial assets.

3 sourcesANYboticsGecko RoboticsBoston DynamicsFleet Orchestration Software
20 hours ago
ResearchUS

Anthropic finds robots can do 74% of US physical tasks but are cost-competitive on just 0.3% of work

Anthropic economists scored about 19,000 O*NET job tasks and concluded that robots can technically perform 74% of physical tasks in the US, yet beat human labour on cost for only 0.3% of tasks. At the historical 3% annual decline in robot prices, the study estimates it would take 40 years for that share to reach 10%.

2 sourcesAnthropicFigure AISkild AIDexterous ManipulationRobot Foundation Models
21 hours ago
ProductUS

Runway turns its video models into robot control with Praxis-1, an open-weight world action model

Runway announced Praxis-1 on 30 September 2026, an open-weight world action model that converts its large-scale video pretraining into control for real robots. Early tests run with Noble Machines, Standard Bots and Ultra on bimanual, six-axis arm and mobile-base hardware, and public weights are promised in the coming months.

2 sourcesRunwayPhysical IntelligenceNVIDIAWorld ModelsRobot Foundation Models
21 hours ago
BusinessCN

Xiaomi-backed robot chip designer Amicro clears Hong Kong listing hearing as sales rise 42% and losses widen

Zhuhai-based Amicro, which designs robot-specific chips, sensors and navigation software for cleaning and service robots, published its post-hearing information pack on the Hong Kong exchange on 30 September 2026 and is seeking a Main Board listing under Chapter 18C. Revenue rose 42.3% to RMB406.7 million in 2025 on more than 3.5 million solution sets sold, while the net loss widened to RMB155.1 million.

1 sourceAmicro TechnologyD-RoboticsSiMa.aiEdge AI ComputeLiDAR
22 hours ago
FundingUS

Columbia spinout Tangent Robotics raises $4.5 million to give factory robots a sense of touch

Tangent Robotics, a New York company spun out of Columbia Engineering, said on 30 September 2026 it raised a $4.5 million pre-seed round co-led by Fly Ventures and Toyota Ventures. It is building robot hands with light-based touch sensors and learning methods for fine assembly tasks such as connector mating and gear meshing.

1 sourceTangent RoboticsWonik RoboticsSanctuary AITactile SensingDexterous Manipulation
24 hours ago
FundingUS

Gradient leads US$7.6 million round for Feather, which sells a US$29,990 two-armed robot and lets buyers pick the brain

Feather Robotics, a US startup selling an open-hardware wheeled robot with two arms for US$29,990, raised US$7.6 million in a round led by Gradient, the lead investor said on 30 September 2026. Gradient said Feather has already passed US$1 million in revenue, with robots at work in manufacturing and food service.

3 sourcesFeather Robotics1X TechnologiesInbolt
yesterday
PartnershipIT

Eni offers Italy's Generative Bionics its plants, polymers and supercomputers in a humanoid robot pact

Eni signed a memorandum of understanding with Genoa start-up Generative Bionics on 30 September 2026 to test the GENE.01 humanoid in inspection and remote assistance and to study producing, testing and recycling the robots' batteries at Eni sites. Chemicals arm Versalis and its subsidiary Finproject will work on the robot's feet, and Eni will assess opening its high-performance computing to Physical AI training. No financial terms were disclosed.

6 sourcesGenerative BionicsEniAMDTactile SensingTeleoperation
yesterday
MarketDE

Service robot sales jump 24% on logistics machines while humanoids sold about 7,000 units in 2025, IFR says

Shipments of professional service robots rose 24% to almost 250,000 units in 2025, led by 117,500 transport and logistics robots, the International Federation of Robotics said on 30 September 2026. The IFR counted about 7,000 full-size humanoids sold worldwide and 174 humanoid makers, more than half of them in China, and said most humanoid uses still rely on teleoperation.

1 sourceUBTECH RoboticsUnitree RoboticsAgiBotFleet Orchestration SoftwareTeleoperation
yesterday
Funding—

Andreessen Horowitz leads $7.5 million pre-seed for Aleph Surgical, which wants robots to operate without a surgeon at the controls

Aleph Surgical, which is building autonomous surgical robots on embodied foundation models, said on 30 September 2026 that it raised $7.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company says its first system is already learning surgical tasks from demonstrations, but it has published no success rates.

3 sourcesAleph SurgicalInboltDestro AIRobot Foundation ModelsImitation Learning
yesterday
FundingFR

Paris-based Inbolt raises $12.5 million to take its AI robot vision from car plants to data centres

Inbolt, which sells 3D vision and AI software that lets industrial robots correct their motions in real time, said on 30 September 2026 it raised $12.5 million in a round led by Shift4Good. The money funds expansion in the US and Asia-Pacific and a move into data centres and electronics manufacturing, taking total funding to $34 million.

2 sourcesInboltFANUCYaskawa ElectricDepth Vision
All stories on the WireAnalysisBrowse the directory

Methodology

Sources

Company announcements, regulatory filings, research papers, investor announcements and established outlets. Every story lists its sources with links, and every figure points back to one.

Verification

A story reported by one outlet is marked Single source until a second independent source or an editor confirms it. Every figure carries a status: Official · Verified · Reported · Estimated · Unverified.

No estimates as fact

We do not present our own estimates as reported figures. Market caps, disclosed valuations and estimates are separate concepts and are never merged or averaged.