Travis Kalanick’s robotics company Atoms has raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz will join the company’s board of directors following the investment. Bain Capital, Fifth Wall and others participated in the round. Perhaps most notably, Uber also joined the funding round, reconnecting Kalanick with the company he founded,
Following liftoff from Cape Canaveral on July 21 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Robotic Mission Vehicle (MRV) hosting the NASA-backed Robotic Geosynchronous Satellite Servicing (RSGS) payload is now en route to geosynchronous Earth orbit, where it will use its advanced robotics to service spacecraft. RSGS leverages NASA’s space robotics expertise, aligned with the
Some companies want their humanoid robots to fold your clothes. Others want them in the workplace. Sankaet Pathak and his startup Foundation Future Industries have a slightly different goal: producing an all-American super soldier robot. Pathak, the Foundation’s chief executive, says his company plans to begin equipping its humanoids with lethal capabilities soon, although he
Agility Robotics is opening a 60,000-square-foot facility to train its humanoid robots in Fremont, California, just down the road from the factory where Tesla is expected to begin manufacturing its Optimus robots this year. Tesla has increasingly bet on Optimus. Elon Musk recently said he hopes it will be “the biggest product ever created” once
Courtesy of 1X Courtesy of 1X “We love the idea that a robot can be a peaceful, fun, silly and confident presence in life,” says Dar Sleeper, vice president of product and design at 1X. “Something you’re comfortable with, something that’s smooth from the inside out. If you want something to fit into your life,
When it comes to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), large language models simply don’t have what it takes. Models like ChatGPT and Claude are great with text, but are less adept at understanding how things actually move through space and time, an essential skill for producing intelligence that generalizes. It turns out that gap could