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Every funding round, launch and paper, as it's reported.

134 stories
Mar 13, 2026
FundingUS

Sunday raises $165 million at a $1.15 billion valuation to move its glove-trained Memo robot from demos into homes

Sunday, the Silicon Valley developer of the Memo household robot, said on 12 March 2026 that it had raised an oversubscribed $165 million Series B at a $1.15 billion valuation, led by Coatue, with Coatue's Thomas Laffont joining the board. The company trains Memo on data from people wearing its Skill Capture Glove instead of teleoperating robots, plans an invite-only home beta from the autumn and expects to ship at scale in 2027-2028.

Mar 12, 2026
FundingUS

Rivian spinout Mind Robotics raises $500 million Series A, and Rivian books a $506 million gain on its stake

Mind Robotics, the industrial AI robotics company founded and led by Rivian chief executive RJ Scaringe, said on March 11, 2026 that Accel and Andreessen Horowitz co-led a $500 million Series A, about four months after a $115 million seed. Rivian's filings show it deconsolidated the start-up in March, valued its remaining 37.6% at about $569 million using the Series A share price and recorded a $506 million gain, which by ROBOTNESS arithmetic implies an equity value near $1.51 billion.

Mar 11, 2026
M&AJP

EU clears SoftBank's $5.4 billion ABB Robotics deal, a price of 17 times EBITDA to give its robot AI a body

The European Commission cleared SoftBank Group's purchase of ABB's robotics division, valued at USD 5.375 billion, under its simplified procedure on 11 March 2026. The price equals 17.2 times the division's 2024 EBITDA, while the floor valuation of Skild AI, whose round SoftBank led in January, is 2.6 times as high. Approvals in China and the United States remain, and both companies expect closing in mid-to-late 2026.

Feb 27, 2026
PartnershipDE

BMW brings a humanoid into German car production for the first time, putting Hexagon's AEON on battery work in Leipzig

BMW Group said on 27 February 2026 that Plant Leipzig will pilot Hexagon Robotics' wheeled AEON humanoid in high-voltage battery assembly and component production, after a first test in December 2025 and with the pilot phase set for summer 2026. It also set up a Munich-based Center of Competence for Physical AI in Production and published the results of its 2025 Figure 02 pilot in Spartanburg, where the robot moved more than 90,000 parts in about 1,250 hours.

Feb 27, 2026
BusinessKR

Hyundai pledges 9 trillion won for a Saemangeum hub that pairs a 30,000-robot plant with a 50,000-GPU data centre

Hyundai Motor Group agreed on February 27, 2026 to invest about 9 trillion won from 2026 in a robotics, AI and hydrogen hub at Saemangeum in North Jeolla. The plan includes a 400 billion won robot cluster with a finished-robot factory sized for about 30,000 units a year, a contract-manufacturing foundry and a parts complex, due in 2029, next to a 5.8 trillion won AI data centre scaled in phases to 50,000 GPUs.

Feb 11, 2026
FundingUS

Apptronik raises $520 million Series A-X at triple its earlier valuation, taking the round past $935 million as it readies a new Apollo

Austin humanoid maker Apptronik said on 11 February 2026 that it had closed a $520 million Series A-X extension priced at three times its Series A valuation, lifting total Series A funding above $935 million. John Deere, AT&T Ventures and Qatar Investment Authority joined returning backers B Capital, Google, Mercedes-Benz and PEAK6, and the company said the money will pay for Apollo production, training and data facilities and a new robot due in 2026.

Feb 2, 2026
FundingCN

LimX Dynamics raises $200 million Series B as JD and SAIC-backed capital bet on its robot operating system

Shenzhen-based LimX Dynamics said on 2 February 2026 it had closed a US$200 million Series B with investors including Stone Venture, JD, Oriental Fortune Capital, CoStone Capital and SAIC-backed Shangqi Capital. The round came three weeks after the launch of LimX COSA, the agentic operating system that runs its full-size humanoid Oli, and the company added a second US$200 million pre-IPO round 162 days later.

Jan 29, 2026
BusinessUS

Tesla sets end-2026 start for its first Optimus line and a 1 million-robot capacity goal as car profits shrink

Tesla said in its fourth-quarter 2025 update that it will unveil a mass-production Gen 3 Optimus in the first quarter of 2026 and start production on a first line before year end, with eventual capacity of 1 million robots a year. The plan came as 2025 net income fell 46% to $3.79 billion and Tesla agreed to invest about $2 billion in xAI.

Jan 28, 2026
ResearchUS

Figure's Helix 02 hands a humanoid's whole body to one neural network, deleting 109,504 lines of control code

Figure AI on Jan. 27, 2026 released Helix 02, a robot foundation model that runs a humanoid from camera pixels and fingertip touch down to joint commands at 1 kHz, replacing 109,504 lines of hand-written C++ with a 10-million-parameter learned controller. The company showed a Figure 03 unloading and reloading a dishwasher across a full kitchen in a four-minute, 61-action run it says had no resets and no teleoperation.

Jan 26, 2026
BusinessJP

FANUC robot orders rise 21% as China and Europe pick up, and its CRX cobot draws more than 1,000 physical AI orders after iREX

FANUC said robot division orders rose 20.9% to ¥98.8 billion in the October to December quarter, while robot sales grew 21.9% to ¥96.6 billion. The Japanese robot and CNC maker raised its full-year sales forecast to ¥840.7 billion but trimmed its operating profit outlook by ¥3.0 billion, and said it had taken orders for more than 1,000 CRX collaborative robots linked to physical AI since the iREX show in December.

Jan 23, 2026
BusinessUS

Intuitive passes $10 billion in revenue as da Vinci 5 takes half of its robot shipments, but guides procedure growth lower

Intuitive reported on January 22, 2026 that 2025 revenue rose about 21% to $10.06 billion as surgeons performed 3.153 million da Vinci procedures, and da Vinci 5 made up 870 of the 1,721 systems it placed. The company guided 2026 da Vinci procedure growth to 13% to 15%, down from about 18%, and put the tariff cost to its gross margin at about 1.2% of revenue.

Jan 14, 2026
FundingUS

Skild AI raises $1.4 billion in SoftBank-led Series C, lifting its valuation past $14 billion on a bet that one model can run any robot

Skild AI said on 14 January 2026 it had closed a $1.4 billion Series C led by SoftBank Group, valuing the company at more than $14 billion. NVIDIA's venture arm, Macquarie Capital and Bezos Expeditions joined, alongside new strategic backers LG, Schneider Electric, CommonSpirit and Salesforce Ventures. The start-up, founded in 2023, said its Skild Brain software went from no revenue to about $30 million within a few months of 2025.

Jan 6, 2026
M&AIL

Mobileye pays $900 million for Mentee Robotics, the humanoid start-up chaired by its own chief executive

Mobileye agreed on 5 January 2026 to buy Israeli humanoid developer Mentee Robotics for $900 million in cash and stock and closed the deal on 3 February. Its filings show chief executive Amnon Shashua, Mentee's chairman and co-founder, receives about $341 million and chief technology officer Shai Shalev-Shwartz about $118 million, with 90% of the founders' stock released only after two and four years. Mentee targets autonomous customer pilots in 2026 and series production in 2028.

Jan 6, 2026
ProductUS

Boston Dynamics starts building the production Atlas as Hyundai targets 30,000 robots a year and a Georgia line debut in 2028

Boston Dynamics unveiled the production version of its electric Atlas humanoid at CES 2026 on January 5 and said manufacturing begins immediately in Boston, with all 2026 units already committed to Hyundai Motor Group and Google DeepMind. Hyundai set a goal of a production system able to build 30,000 robots a year by 2028, when Atlas is due to start parts sequencing at its Georgia Metaplant, moving into assembly by 2030. Hyundai Mobis will supply the actuators and Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics models are to supply the cognition.