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Mecka AI has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by Sequoia, with investors including Nvidia and Microsoft’s M12. The company, founded in 2024, collects human motion data through sensors and smartphones to train robots, aiming to replicate the success of data-labeling firms for AI models. This funding highlights growing investor interest in data-driven approaches to robotics development.
Noitom Robotics has published HiPHI, a whole-body human motion dataset totaling 617.5 hours captured with optical motion capture accurate to sub-millimeter precision. Of that, 245.7 hours cover human-object interaction with synchronized object trajectories and meshes, and the data is organized using FrameNet, a linguistic framework for categorizing human actions. A white paper from IEEE Spectrum and Wiley describes the dataset and shows reinforcement learning policies trained on it transferring from simulation to a physical humanoid robot.
Recent discussions highlight that for robots to become more common in households, companies need to enhance how they market these devices. The historical portrayal of robots, dating back to Georges Méliès' 1897 film, has often depicted them as dramatic or destructive, which may influence public perception today. To increase acceptance, a shift in narrative around robots is suggested.
Two major companies with over 15 years of experience plan to launch innovative solutions in 2026: autonomous robot fleets for construction projects and an open-source platform for real-time IoT data analysis. These initiatives aim to modernize traditional industries and expand technological capabilities.
Safeworld, founded by Carnegie Mellon's Dr. Ding Zhao, Kyle Wong, and Simo Rachidi, has emerged from stealth with a seed round exceeding $12 million led by Shine Capital and a16z Speedrun. The company evaluates robotic control systems using simulations populated with realistic human models, aiming to assess risk in generative AI-driven robots before deployment.
REK staged cage matches where YouTuber Frankie LaPenna fought three humanoid robots, taking hard kicks and punches that knocked him down repeatedly. The California State Athletic Commission issued a cease-and-desist letter on September 30, citing state laws requiring licensing for any combat exhibition involving a human. REK CEO Cix Liv publicly shared the letter on X rather than expressing concern.
Figure, the U.S. robotics company, decommissioned its older F.02 humanoid robots by having them jump into a 75-ton vat of molten steel at a foundry in Finland. CEO Brett Adcock said disassembly was impractical due to proprietary technology and limited staff, and crowdsourced the idea on X, where Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested melting them. The robots performed the jump and melt sequence successfully across six melts within a 24-hour window, with the resulting steel bars shipped back to the U.S.
Figure AI released a nearly four-minute promotional video showing its older F.02 humanoid robot units being thrown or made to leap into a vat of liquid steel at a foundry in Imatra, Finland. The video echoes a scene from "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and features Arnold Schwarzenegger. Figure says the robots were trained beforehand to dive off a balcony in test conditions, and the actual filming happened across six melts with only a 20-minute window per melt.
A year after Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's fourth 'Master Plan' promising an era of 'amazing abundance' through robots, robotaxis and AI, the company still hasn't offered concrete details on what that abundance actually entails. Musk has made sweeping statements—everyone getting a penthouse, robots performing surgery, people having 'anything they can think of'—but has not addressed practical questions like housing supply or implementation. Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Micron's FY27 guidance states that demand from humanoid robots and other physical AI devices could outpace data centers as a driver of memory and storage demand. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said each humanoid robot needs roughly 200GB of DRAM and several terabytes of storage, and that current memory demand already exceeds supply by about 50%. The company expects new cleanroom capacity to be insufficient to ease the shortage soon.
Flourish Robots has begun taking preorders for its Flourish 1 humanoid robot, priced at $3,555 for the first 50 units, with deliveries planned for December. The company says the robot can learn household chores like sorting items, watering plants and cleaning litter boxes within about 30 minutes using a smartphone app, with no coding required, and an optional subscription will cover cloud compute for some AI features. CEO Antoine Marcel says the robots are already in manufacturing, with battery supply lead times being the main scheduling factor.
Chinese robotics company AgiBot has released more than 300 autonomous humanoid robots into Chimelong Spaceship Park in Zhuhai, where they mingle with visitors performing tasks like playing table tennis, demonstrating martial arts, giving directions, and greeting hotel guests. The deployment is described as the largest public rollout of its kind in China to date.