Funding and valuations

• RobCo reaches a $1 billion valuation through a secondary sale
• Physical Intelligence in talks at a $20 billion valuation without revenue
• Foundry Robotics closes an oversubscribed $100 million Series A
• Dream Labs, Eka Robotics and Mecka AI raise $90M, $150M and $60M
• Humanoid startups raise a record $8.6 billion across 104 rounds
• Robotics venture funding hits $16.3 billion in the first quarter alone
• Only one binding robot order with unit counts exists, Schaeffler with Humanoid

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Foundation models and software

• Microsoft Research releases Rho, open-weight 5B VLAs for manipulation
• Dream-1 and AW-0 mark the arrival of World Action Models
• NEURA Robotics launches Neuron AI and adds memory with NXAI
• GPT-6 Astra reaches 66.3% as a direct robot policy
• GPT-6.1 Terra scores 42% against 38% for Claude Opus 5.5
• Data, not GPUs, is the bottleneck for Physical AI
• Sereact's Cortex learns from 1 billion real picks across 200+ systems

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Humanoids and deployments

• Chinese manufacturers ship over 97% of global humanoids
• Leju Kuavo humanoids reach 98% loading success but run slower than humans
• Agility Robotics expands Digit deployments, with AGCO piloting from 2027
• Nearly 20 carmakers now build humanoids against two in 2021
• Actuators are 50 to 60% of humanoid cost, drawing in Timken and SKF
• HD Hyundai Robotics puts manipulation ahead of walking
• Industrial robots in operation reach a record 5 million

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Platforms and infrastructure

• NVIDIA's $12.9 billion Hugging Face deal integrates GPU to robot
• NVIDIA extends its stack at GTC Berlin with Isaac Lab 3.0 and Isaac OS
• AWS launches an open-source Physical AI Toolchain on NVIDIA's stack
• Gemini Robotics ER 2 arrives on Google Cloud
• T-Mobile's 5G Advanced moves VLA reasoning to the network edge
• Anthropic's S-1 names robotics as a growth market
• Charge autonomy is the under-invested bottleneck

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Europe and Germany

• NEURA Robotics and TUM open RoboGym with around 100 robots
• Seven industrial partnerships bring manufacturers into humanoid robotics
• NEURA unveils the 4NE1 Gen 4 humanoid and launches HealthTech
• Germany counts six robotics unicorns
• Zurich produces robotics startups but misses the most valuable ones
• Microduck sells over 15,000 units, 2026's most popular robot
• Future Robotics Summit in Stuttgart draws 200 participants

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Thanks to Unni Mecheeri, Jan Zizka, Erdem Ürün, Rafael Hostettler, Jeff Winter, Leo Su, Alexey Navolokin, Jan Burian, Patricia Tang, John Robert, Mischa Dohler, John Saw, Thomas Knox, Matei Ciocarlie, Samuel Bouchard, Pranali Desai, Kevin Ampeh, Philipp Wehn, Sergey Kochnev, Dr. Tilman Buchner, Gianmaria Sbetta, Vincentius Liong, Mike Kalil, John Koetsier, Patrick Denard, Aaron Prather, Mete Gultekin, Clem Delangue, David Reger, Seb Johnson, Joel Jang, Javier Medel, Swami Sivasubramanian, Brett Adcock, Patrick Kelleher, Adarsh Kulkarni, Jonas Messner, Alok Jain, Carolina Parada, Onur Sezgin, Benjamin Duranovic, Javier Correa, Rebecca Torrence, Rudy Cohen, Rahim Ali, Muskan Kalra, Lucas Ngoo, Michael Murray, Andrey Kolobov, Martin Viecha, Ashley Llorens, Albert Ortig, Daniel Bode, Andrey Dashchenko, Tanuja Randery, Vanessa Loiola, Ozgur Tohumcu, Chris Yoo, Michael Beer, Lukas M. Ziegler, Peter Kappes, Ivan Landabaso, Jenai Xuning Yang, Roko Karanusic, Moonie Zhu, Andreas Riegler, Spyridon Georgiadis, Jay C., Lara Sophie Bothur, Anne Loos and everyone else who contributed insights to this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn: