The race to own physical AI: hello Softbank, a16z, Korea, Washington, and Germany

SoftBank’s robot stack takes shape

First up, SoftBank and 1X.

There’s no meaningful new development this morning. SoftBank is still reportedly in talks to acquire a majority stake in 1X at around a 6-billion-dollar valuation, and there’s still no announced deal.

But this makes a lot of sense.

• Last year, SoftBank agreed to acquire ABB Robotics for 5.375 billion dollars.
  
• In January, it led Skild AI’s 1.4-billion-dollar funding round at a valuation above 14 billion.
  
• And now, potentially, 1X — which is developing NEO, a humanoid robot for the home.
  

These are very different companies, but they fit together surprisingly well.

• 1X: humanoid robots.
  
• Skild AI: a general-purpose robot brain.
  
• ABB Robotics: industrial robots and a massive global customer base.
  
• AutoStore and Berkshire Grey: warehouse automation.
• SoftBank Robotics: Softbank's robotics integrator.

None of that is one integrated platform today. But if the 1X deal happens, SoftBank starts looking less like an investor making a collection of robotics bets and more like a company assembling many of the layers of a physical AI empire.

a16z bets $1.1 billion on the machine age

SoftBank isn’t the only major investor seeing AI become physical.

Andreessen Horowitz just raised a new 1.1-billion-dollar Machine Age Fund specifically to invest in the physical infrastructure behind AI. That means chips, memory, networking and storage. But it also means data centers, robotics, and even AI devices in the home.

For a venture firm famous for the phrase “software is eating the world,” that is a pretty significant evolution.

The argument from a16z is essentially that AI has run into the physical world.

It needs more compute, faster interconnects, much more power, better cooling, better memory — and efficient edge computers that let AI actually sense, move, and interact with its surroundings.

In other words, smarter models aren’t enough. AI needs machines, and a billion-dollar venture fund dedicated to that buildout is another indication that physical AI is becoming a major investment category of its own.

Korea goes all-in on humanoids

South Korea is putting some serious government money behind humanoid robots.

The country plans to invest 2.3 trillion won — about 1.66 billion U.S. dollars — through 2030 to build a domestic, full-stack humanoid robotics industry.

That means robots, but also the pieces inside them: actuators, robotic hands, sensors, AI chips, batteries, and more. Korea wants to raise the domestic share of key humanoid components from about 45% today to 80%. And it plans to actually deploy domestically developed humanoids in major industries.

There’s another interesting wrinkle here.

Boston Dynamics is an American robotics company, but it’s controlled by Hyundai Motor Group. So Atlas isn’t a Korean-developed robot, but one of the most advanced humanoid programs on the planet is already part of a Korean industrial giant ... but, if built in the U.S., will have access to the American market.

Interesting times!

Washington funds human-robot teamwork

The U.S. National Science Foundation is also putting new money into robotics research.

NSF is investing 90 million dollars over five years across three new Science and Technology Centers. One of them, led by the University of Texas at Austin, is specifically focused on human and robot co-adaptation, and it will study how people and robots learn from and adjust to each other as service and assistive robots move into homes, hospitals, workplaces, and public spaces.

That center gets about 30 million dollars over the first five years.

So this is much smaller than Korea’s national industrial push, but it’s focused on a question that gets more important every year: Not just can we build capable robots but can we build robots that ordinary humans can safely and effectively live and work with ...

Bosch puts humanoids on the calendar

Meanwhile, Europe has an actual date for humanoid robot series production.

Bosch’s plant in Bühl, Germany, will begin series production of robots for UK startup Humanoid in August 2027. Bosch and Humanoid have already confirmed their manufacturing partnership after testing HMND 01 robots at the plant earlier this year.

The first commercial humanoid robot Bosch will be building rolls on wheels instead of walking on legs.

That might sound less exciting than Humanoid's biped version, but guess what: factories love robots that reliably show up for work. And use less battery power. And are stable working platforms.

Number of the day: one every four seconds

And finally, our number of the day is one every four seconds.

Yes, odd number, I know.

Hugging Face just unveiled MicroDuck, a tiny open-source robot that can walk, talk and — because apparently walking wasn’t enough — roller-skate. And they are selling like crazy: Hugging Face co-founder and chief science officer Thomas Wolf told Bloomberg the company is currently selling roughly one MicroDuck every four seconds.

It's not a humanoid robot. But it is a very cool toy ... and one that you can actually train.

Sources

Humanoid MegaHub — SoftBank talks to acquire majority of 1Xhttps://www.humanoidmegahub.com/news/humanoid-daily-softbank-talks-acquire-majority

Andreessen Horowitz — The Machine Age Fundhttps://a16z.com/the-machine-age-fund/

Korea JoongAng Daily — Korea to spend 2.3 trillion won through 2030 on full-stack humanoid developmenthttps://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/korea-to-spend-23-trillion-won-through-2030-on-fullstack-humanoid-development/12847139

The Robot Report — NSF invests $90M in three new technology centers, including one focused on roboticshttps://www.therobotreport.com/nsf-invests-90m-three-new-technology-centers-including-one-focused-robotics/

TechTimes — Bosch confirms August 2027 start for Europe’s first humanoid robot production linehttps://www.techtimes.com/articles/325304/20260824/bosch-confirms-august-2027-start-europes-first-humanoid-robot-production-line.htm

Bloomberg Tech — Hugging Face pushes deeper into robotics with MicroDuckhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-08-27/hugging-face-pushes-deeper-into-robotics-with-microduck-video