Alipay’s owner just open-sourced an entire robot brain in a single week
Alipay’s owner just open-sourced an entire robot brain in a single week

The company behind China’s Alipay just gave away an AI that builds a playable video game world and keeps it running for a full hour. Robbyant, the robotics arm of fintech giant Ant Group, open-sourced its LingBot-World 2.0 world model this week. It gen…

A four-year-old has seen more of the world than ChatGPT. Yann LeCun is betting $1bn on that
A four-year-old has seen more of the world than ChatGPT. Yann LeCun is betting $1bn on that

Yann LeCun is not a natural contrarian, but he is playing one right now. The man often called a godfather of AI built the convolutional neural network in the late 1980s. That design still powers phone cameras, medical scans, and driver-assistance syste…

Robots swept RoboCup 2026, and they’re coming for the human World Cup by 2050
Robots swept RoboCup 2026, and they’re coming for the human World Cup by 2050

While the world watched the World Cup, robots played their own version in Incheon. RoboCup 2026 ran from 30 June to 6 July in Songdo, drawing teams from dozens of countries. When the whistle blew, one name was behind every winner. Teams using robots fr…

NATO is building an AI ‘Kill Web’ to stop a Russian attack before it starts
NATO is building an AI ‘Kill Web’ to stop a Russian attack before it starts

NATO is building a vast AI network along its eastern flank, designed to spot an attack early and strike back fast. The plan is called the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, and internal documents name one adversary outright: Russia. German tabloid BI…

Nomagic’s warehouse robots got an AI brain, and it halved the calls for human help
Nomagic’s warehouse robots got an AI brain, and it halved the calls for human help

Nomagic, a Warsaw-based warehouse robotics firm, put a vision-language-action model into live customer operations. It says the model roughly halved the rate at which its robots stall for human help. Its new AI lab, run by a former Google DeepMind resea…

IEEE Honors Robotics Pioneer Toshio Fukuda
IEEE Honors Robotics Pioneer Toshio Fukuda

Toshio Fukuda has been blazing trails for most of his career. He is considered to be one of the most prolific scholars in robotics, writing more than 2,000 research papers and authoring several books on the field. He’s an influential figure thanks to …

Ex-Tesla Optimus scientist launches UMA to build Europe’s humanoid robot
Ex-Tesla Optimus scientist launches UMA to build Europe’s humanoid robot

A former Tesla scientist who helped build the intelligence behind Elon Musk’s Optimus robot wants to do it all again from Paris, only this time for Europe. Rémi Cadene, chief executive and co-founder of the startup UMA, has unveiled plans for a lightwe…

Weave’s $7,999 Isaac 1 bets home robots don’t need legs or fingers
Weave’s $7,999 Isaac 1 bets home robots don’t need legs or fingers

The robot butler has been five years away for about twenty years. Weave Robotics thinks the trick is to aim lower. Its new home robot, Isaac 1, does not walk, has no fingers, and mostly just wants to do your laundry. It also costs a fraction of its hum…

China approves Unitree’s Shanghai listing registration, valuing IPO at $619M
China approves Unitree’s Shanghai listing registration, valuing IPO at $619M

China’s securities regulator has approved Unitree Robotics’ registration to list on Shanghai’s STAR Market, clearing the last formal hurdle before the humanoid robot maker can price and sell shares. The approval, confirmed by Reuters on Thursday, value…

Quantum Systems raises $1.2bn and doubles its valuation to $8bn as defence money floods in
Quantum Systems raises $1.2bn and doubles its valuation to $8bn as defence money floods in

Europe has a new defence-tech heavyweight. Quantum Systems, a German maker of autonomous drones, has raised $1.2bn and more than doubled its valuation to about $8bn. It is one of the largest rounds ever for a European defence startup. The Bavarian comp…