Trends archive
Korea's logistics giants are racing to deploy humanoid robots
CJ Logistics and Lotte Global Logistics are running simultaneous humanoid robot pilots in Korean warehouses, backed by government funding and a national robotics strategy. The robots from Korean startup Robros are not fast yet, but the logistics industry is betting on 24-hour stamina, not speed.
Oct 7, 2026Kawasaki, Softbank, Sony, Honda and 40 other companies partnering to build Japanese physical AI
Kawasaki has been building a humanoid robot since 2015. Now it's partnering with a 44-company consortium to build Japan's domestic physical AI stack. It's structured like the country's most successful industrial strategies, with SoftBank, Sony, Honda, and 41 other companies behind it.
Oct 6, 2026Singapore's $100 million center to train humanoid robots for bomb scenes, prison searches, and hazmat missions
The Home Team Humanoid Robotics Centre is 29,000 square feet, costs $100 million, and opened September 30. It's the world's first facility dedicated entirely to training humanoid robots for public safety work and its first operational deployment target is 2028.
Oct 6, 2026Dyna Robotics' new Taku humanoid is built for a job, not a set of tasks
Dyna Robotics wants to sell businesses a robot employee, not a robot task. Taku is the hardware making that pitch real: a wheeled semi-humanoid that chains 79 subtasks across an hour of laundry work with no human standing by.
Oct 5, 2026Toyota's plan for 400,000 humanoid robots rewrites what 'at scale' means
Toyota is planning to deploy 400,000 humanoid robots across its factories and supplier network starting in 2028 ... a fleet larger than any other company has even imagined. Except, maybe, Tesla.
Oct 3, 2026Anthropic says cheap robot labor is 40 years away. But ... it's pricing the wrong robots
Anthropic says robots can do 74% of U.S. physical work but are cheaper than people for just 0.3%. With that logic, cheap robot labor is 40 years away. But their math focuses on single-purpose machines. General-purpose humanoids running 20-hour days and learning new jobs through software updates could reach ROI in years, not decades.
Oct 3, 2026General Robotics CEO: we're wasting billions on physical AI chasing the wrong layer
General Robotics says its GRID platform can onboard a new robot in two hours instead of a month. CEO Ashish Kapoor, who led Microsoft's robotics research group, explains how AI agents and a single robotics monorepo make that possible, why mixed robot fleets are inevitable, and why he thinks billions invested in robot foundation models may be chasing the wrong layer.
Oct 3, 2026Humanoid robots are shipping at scale, but safety validation isn't keeping up
Humanoids are shipping by the tens of thousands, but proving they're safe around people is lagging behind the growth. We chat with iMerit's Erikk Cass on edge cases, home robots, and why the demo isn't the evidence.
Oct 2, 2026NEURA Robotics launches a healthcare division with a robot that moves hospital beds
NEURA Robotics has launched NEURA HealthTech, a new business division targeting hospital logistics, starting with an autonomous robot that transports beds through corridors and elevators. The $1.4B-backed German company is pitching into the EU's projected 4.1 million health worker shortfall, with a RaaS subscription model and a broader portfolio including MiPA and MAiRA.
Sep 30, 2026Tesla's Optimus costs $46,000 with China. Without China, it's $131,000
Tesla's humanoid robot is already deeply embedded in China's manufacturing ecosystem. Removing it would nearly triple the unit cost.
Sep 30, 2026South Korea is writing the world's first law to get robots in and out of apartment buildings
Seoul's proposed special law for residential robot access could unlock a massive new deployment category and set a template for every other country watching. It could also unlock massive robot deployments across the country.
Sep 28, 2026Japan made one of the world's first humanoid robots. Now it's buying from China
Japan Airlines, Honda, and Hitachi are deploying Chinese-made humanoid robots to solve a labor crisis. And the country that gave the world ASIMO is now watching its domestic robotics industry scramble to catch up.
Sep 28, 2026Feather launches a cheap(ish) American robot ... and outsources the brain
Feather Robotics launched a $29,990 two-armed robot built to be a body for other companies' AI, running models from Nvidia, Skild or Physical Intelligence. The pre-seed startup raised $7.6 million, claims over $1 million in revenue, and is betting thousands of physical AI companies will want hardware they can buy.
Sep 25, 2026Unitree's humanoid robots reach America's Got Talent finals
Eight Unitree G1 humanoid robots and their human partner Wu Yufei have danced their way to the AGT finals ... a pop culture milestone that raises pointed questions about Chinese-made robots competing in America during a period of intensifying US-China tech tensions.
Sep 24, 2026XPENG will be shipping 1,000 humanoid robots per month by year-end
XPENG held its first Robotics Supply Chain Partner Conference this week, committing to build 1,000 IRON humanoids per month by end of 2026 and to deploying commercially in Q1 2027, backed by a $900M raise and a 110,000 sqm Guangzhou factory.
Sep 23, 2026A humanoid robot fights a man, Unitree's new $6,500 hand, Figure does some homework, Faraday launches 9 new robots, and more ...
Today in Humanoid Daily ... Unitree launches a new (and good!) hand, Boston Dynamics opens an Atlas factory training ground, Figure's humanoid enters 30 homes it had never seen. Faraday Future launches 9 new robots, a human fights a humanoid robot in a cage and loses ... and the number of the day is 7,000.
Inside BOT: What RoboStrategy is buying in the emerging $10 trillion robot economy
RoboStrategy is a non-diversified, closed-end management investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, trading on the Nasdaq as BOT. We chat with the CEO, Andrew Kang, about who will win in humanoid robots.
Sep 18, 2026GPT-6 Astra just beat human baseline on drone control tasks ... humanoid robots next?
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra is the first AI model to beat human baseline performance on all five drone control subtasks in standard robotics evaluation, even without specialist robotics training. Can generalist models compete with specialist ones in physical domains?
Sep 17, 202626 million humanoid robots a year: Berg Insight maps out the growth curve
A new Berg Insight forecast puts humanoid robot shipments at 26 million units annually by 2040. But the more important number is where the industry actually stands today ... and the growth curve.
Sep 15, 2026Robots and war
It's obvious: robots are increasingly be used for war. Here's how we feel about that at HumanoidMegaHub ... and what we're challenging the industry to do.
Sep 15, 2026Skild AI hits $100M revenue run rate in 10 months. Physical AI is apparently very lucrative
The Pittsburgh physical AI startup that teaches robots new tasks from a single video demonstration has gone from $30M to $100M in annual revenue run rate in under a year, with 60+ customers ...
Sep 10, 2026China's Robot IPO Reality Check
Unitree's shares have dropped 53% from their first-day high, erasing $34 billion in market value. China's regulators just made sure the next humanoid IPO won't get the same free pass.
Sep 10, 2026Samsung accelerates its humanoid robot program, and China looks at humanoids for war
Today in Humanoid Daily: Samsung races toward a humanoid robot, aiming to launch at CES 2027, China explores robots for war Agility Robotic’s finances go public, humanoids spread into real markets, there's a new robot that draws blood, and the number of the day is 26 million ... as in 26 million humanoids a year.
Sam Altman: OpenAI will 'definitely' build a humanoid ... and he thinks the body is the easy part
OpenAI's CEO confirmed he's making a humanoid. Then he made a pretty big claim about what's the hardest part. The company's own job listings, however, say something a bit different.
Sep 3, 2026NVIDIA's robot business is already worth $10 billion/year, and China is its best customer
NVIDIA's physical AI business is already generating roughly $10 billion a year, more than the entire humanoid robot industry combined, with Jensen Huang pointing to a tenfold path over the next decade. A meaningful share of that comes from China, which built about 90% of the world's humanoids last year. But Beijing is racing to build a domestic stack ...
The race to own physical AI: hello Softbank, a16z, Korea, Washington, and Germany
Today in Humanoid Daily ... Softbank's robot stack takes shape (hello, 1X), a16z bets a billion on robotics, Korea spending big, Washington spending big, and Bosch sets a timeline to start building humanoids. And the number of the day is 1 every 4 seconds!
Aug 29, 2026Softbank + 1X: the multi-billion dollar bet that could bring us the home robot
SoftBank is in talks to take majority control of 1X Technologies at a ~$6 billion valuation, which would hand Masayoshi Son a leading Western bet on a humanoid robot built for the home rather than the factory. It's the same play he's run his whole career — pick the category winner, then remove capital as a constraint — and it lands at the exact moment 1X needs manufacturing money most.
Aug 28, 2026America just banned foreign robots. Building them locally costs 3X more
The FCC added foreign-produced advanced robots to its Covered List in July. New data from OpenMind suggests the biggest US weakness isn’t AI, chips, or software ... but the physical supply chain. And, ecosystem density.
What the Robot Games are teaching us about the state of the humanoid robots
Machines are faster than us, the boring events are the most important, firefighting fails, and what we should expect next year: all the updates from the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games in HD18.
Aug 25, 2026Humanoid robot shipments up 300% in first half of 2026, and there's another IPO coming
Humanoid shipments triple in the first half of 2026, hello ET1, the RayNex G3 flexes some muscles in Hong Kong, you can win a humanoid robot, there'a another Humanoid IPO coming, and the number of the day is 30,000.
Aug 21, 2026