Blackstone is buying into Futronic, a South Korean maker of the high-precision actuators that let machines move, in a wager that the least visible hardware in a robot is where the next returns will sit. The firm did not disclose the size of the investm…
Like many engineers, Sarah Downs says she knew she wanted to pursue a STEM career from a young age. As a teenager, she discovered robotics through her Tulsa, Okla., middle school’s First Lego League team, and she fell in love with the field, she says….
Picture a lightweight headset. You think about picking up a cup, and a robot arm reaches out and does it. No button, no voice command, no movement. BrainCo drew crowds with that demo at the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, the South China Mornin…
Bercan Kilic got his dream job in 2023, designing aerodynamics for Red Bull Racing while it was winning everything. He found the engineering magnificent and the point of it thin. His Munich startup, microagi, has now raised $55m, which it says is the l…
Walden Robotics has launched from stealth with $300m and a $1.1bn valuation. The Toyota spin-out builds humanoids for factories, and it left off the legs on purpose. “If you listen to the people on the factory floor, they aren’t ready, and they don’t w…
Monumental has raised a $32m Series B led by Khosla Ventures, money it will spend putting more of its bricklaying robots on building sites in Britain and, for the first time, in the United States. Plural and Hummingbird, both backers of the company’s $…
China’s humanoid gold rush just minted another contender. LimX Dynamics has raised $200m at a $2.21bn valuation. And its founder says the race to list has become do-or-die. A Shenzhen humanoid startup has become the latest name in China’s robot boom to…
Humanoid robots learned to walk years ago. The thing still tripping them up is the hand. 1X has given its NEO home robot new hands, and they are the most interesting thing about it. A robot can stride across a stage and still be useless in a kitchen. L…
First the Royal Navy shoved a robot boat out of a transport plane at 1,300 feet. Then its maker became Europe’s newest defence unicorn. Kraken Technology Group, a British maker of uncrewed surface vessels, has raised $175m (€152.9m) in a Series B round…
Two robots that look roughly like people just reached inside a live animal and removed an organ. No film studio staged the scene. It happened in a lab in California, and it is a first for medicine. Surgeons at the University of California San Diego use…