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yesterday
Partnership—Single source

SoftBank puts $225 million behind ASI's brand-agnostic autonomy for heavy construction fleets

SoftBank Group is providing $225 million to Autonomous Solutions Inc. (ASI) under a joint venture to commercialize autonomous heavy equipment for large infrastructure projects, The Robot Report reported on Sept. 30. ASI, founded in 2000 and based in Mendon, Utah, makes the Mobius fleet orchestration system, which works across equipment brands and runs haul trucks, dozers, loaders and compactors. The partners are targeting roadways, airports, railways, waste management, earthmoving and vertical construction. ASI CEO Mel Torrie said labor-intensive methods are struggling to keep up with the speed and complexity of today's large infrastructure builds.

1 source
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
PartnershipJP

Hitachi and FANUC pair edge AI chips with industrial robots, aiming for a global physical AI rollout from fiscal 2027

Hitachi and FANUC signed a strategic partnership on Sept. 30 to commercialize physical AI jointly, combining Hitachi's HMAX Industry software and in-house edge AI semiconductor with FANUC robots. Trials start in Hitachi's Ibaraki-area plants as “Customer Zero,” with global sales planned from fiscal 2027. No financial terms were disclosed.

4 sourcesFANUCHitachiYaskawa ElectricEdge AI ComputeDepth Vision
3 days ago
PartnershipUSSingle source

Gecko Robotics adopts NVIDIA's agent safety stack to fence in the AI that drives its inspection robots

Gecko Robotics is integrating NVIDIA's Open Agent Safety Platform into its infrastructure inspection robots, The Robot Report reported on Sept. 28. The platform pairs open-source OpenShell software, which enforces policy limits on NVIDIA Vera CPUs while agents run, with Sentry, a reference design on BlueField-4 data processing units that watches agents and quarantines those breaking policy within milliseconds. In Gecko's systems, AI agents start and stop data collection, plan robot paths and raise or lower payloads but do not handle data uploads. The robots inspect fuel tanks, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers for Fortune 100 energy companies, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.

1 sourceNVIDIA
28 days ago
PartnershipUS

Figure commits $3.5 billion to Nscale for up to 100,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs to train its Helix robot model

Figure AI said on September 3, 2026 that it signed a strategic partnership with Nscale for up to 100,000 GPUs on Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform in Barstow, Texas, starting with a $3.5 billion compute commitment that the companies intend to scale beyond $6 billion. Nscale is also making a strategic investment in Figure, which says the capacity will train Helix on data from its crowdsourced Index program.

4 sourcesFigure AINVIDIASkild AIVLARobot Foundation Models
Aug 14, 2026
PartnershipKR

LG and NVIDIA sign robotics pact; LG to unveil bipedal humanoid built with group parts in early 2027

LG Group and NVIDIA signed a strategic collaboration MOU on Aug. 13 covering robots, AI factories and mobility, LG Corp. said. LG will unveil a bipedal humanoid on Jetson Thor and Isaac GR00T in the first quarter of 2027 using LG Electronics actuators, LG Innotek sensors and LG Energy Solution batteries, and will test its wheeled CLOiD on a Tennessee washing-machine line this year.

2 sourcesLG ElectronicsNVIDIAHyundai Motor GroupRobot Foundation ModelsEdge AI Compute
Jul 16, 2026
PartnershipJP

Fujitsu enlists FANUC, Yaskawa and Kawasaki to build a sovereign physical AI platform on NVIDIA technology

Fujitsu said on July 16 it had begun exploring physical AI businesses with three of Japan's largest robot makers, FANUC, Yaskawa Electric and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, using NVIDIA Cosmos, Omniverse, Isaac and the Newton physics engine. Fujitsu will build a common software platform and hardware interfaces, with manufacturing, retail and logistics, and healthcare as first targets. No timeline or financial terms were given.

4 sourcesFujitsuFANUCYaskawa ElectricWorld ModelsSim-to-Real Transfer
Jul 15, 2026
PartnershipJP

Yaskawa puts Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 inside MOTOMAN NEXT to build an agentic industrial robot

Yaskawa Electric said on July 15 it had developed an agentic robot system with Google DeepMind that uses Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 as the decision layer for its MOTOMAN NEXT robot. The system plans and executes tasks from high-level instructions without detailed teaching and recovers from errors on its own. Applications and delivery timing will be announced later.

1 sourceYaskawa ElectricGoogleFANUCRobot Foundation ModelsVLA
May 22, 2026
PartnershipJP

Kawasaki opens a physical AI centre in San Jose with NVIDIA, Microsoft, Analog Devices and Fujitsu, starting with hospital robots

Kawasaki Heavy Industries opened the Kawasaki Physical AI Center San Jose on May 21 to develop AI-driven robot systems with NVIDIA, Analog Devices, Microsoft and Fujitsu, with healthcare and elderly care as the first focus. President Yasuhiko Hashimoto said the goal is a hospital one-stop solution covering patients from arrival to post-operative care. The move comes as Kawasaki plans to lift robot sales 24% this year, led by car body and semiconductor equipment lines.

3 sourcesKawasaki Heavy IndustriesNVIDIAFujitsuRobot Foundation ModelsEdge AI Compute
May 15, 2026
PartnershipJP

FANUC opens its robots to Google's Intrinsic and Gemini and deepens NVIDIA ties in a two-day physical AI push

FANUC said on May 13 that all of its robots will be fully supported on Intrinsic's enterprise software platform and that it has joined Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics trusted tester programme, after shipping more than 1,000 robots for physical AI uses since December. Two days later it expanded its NVIDIA work, linking ROBOGUIDE with Isaac Sim, training a dual-arm robot with Isaac GR00T N and moving a collision-avoidance system to Jetson Thor.

2 sourcesFANUCGoogleGoogle DeepMindVLARobot Foundation Models
Apr 19, 2026
PartnershipDE

Wandelbots, SCHUNK and EY team up on NVIDIA-based physical AI for Germany's Mittelstand as Gessmann brings NOVA to Hannover Messe

Dresden software firm Wandelbots, gripper and automation maker SCHUNK and consultancy EY said on April 19, 2026 they would combine SCHUNK's GROW automation cell, Wandelbots' NOVA platform and NVIDIA Omniverse into a standardised physical AI offer for mid-sized European manufacturers. The same day, W. Gessmann GmbH said it would show NOVA-based mobile robots at Hannover Messe.

4 sourcesWandelbotsNVIDIANeura RoboticsSim-to-Real TransferFleet Orchestration Software