A Reuters review of more than 100 Chinese military procurement notices, academic studies, and defense industry materials documents China’s People’s Liberation Army moving from humanoid robot demonstrations to active procurement, battlefield scenario research, and training data collection systems, with Norinco’s Fuxi humanoid designed for sentry duty and reconnaissance.
Cornell University has received a four-year, $7.5 million USDA grant to establish a Center of Excellence for Orchard Robotics, developing robots for pollination, fruit thinning, apple harvesting, and weeding in collaboration with nine partner organizations including Washington State University, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and Fresh Fruit Robotics.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has confirmed the company is developing a humanoid robot alongside other form factors, with 19 open robotics roles including four actuator-specific positions, indicating OpenAI is building proprietary hardware rather than licensing a chassis as competitors assumed.
Lyte, founded by Apple Face ID and Microsoft Kinect engineers, has raised $165 million in a Series C led by Maverick Silicon at a $1.6 billion post-money valuation, tripling its January 2026 valuation as it scales its LyteVision perception platform from prototypes to production deployments in inspection, logistics, and manufacturing.
Samsung SDS hosted its RX ART 2026 event in Mountain View, California, sharing results from technology validation projects at Samsung Electro-Mechanics, SEMES, Samsung Heavy Industries, Samsung E&A, and Samsung Display, using Walden Robotics and RoboForce platforms to validate physical AI on live factory floors.
Paris-based Wandercraft is in talks to raise approximately €100 million at a €750 million pre-money valuation, advised by Goldman Sachs, as customer and investor Renault plans to scale from 10 Calvin-40 humanoid robots by end of 2026 to 350 across its French and Spanish factories by end of 2027.
Zeroth has launched Bridge, an 88-centimeter AI-native humanoid robot with open SDKs and motion-control APIs, alongside OpenBridge, a fully open-source ecosystem with a shared Skill Hub, targeting developers who want to build and share robot capabilities across a community platform.
Tesla has begun producing Optimus robots at its Fremont factory, using the space previously occupied by Model S and X production, with initial output focused on internal factory deployment through an “Optimus Academy” rather than commercial sales, as Musk describes the scaling challenge as the hardest manufacturing problem Tesla has ever faced.
Elon Musk told the G20 meeting that humanoid robots will begin producing other robots, creating exponential self-replication, and that more than one billion humanoid robots will exist within ten years, with each robot producing approximately five times the economic output of a human worker.
iRobot has launched the Roomba Max 875 Combo Robot, its most advanced robot vacuum and mop to date, featuring proprietary SealForce carpet sealing technology, ThermaMist heated mist mopping, and AI-powered DriLift automatic carpet protection, priced at $1,199 alongside the $899 Roomba Plus 678 Combo.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued a federal procurement notice to spend up to $2 million on Boston Dynamics Spot robot dogs for border security, infrastructure inspection, and hazard assessment in environments that pose risks to personnel.
Pudu Robotics has launched the GT Series, a three-model lineup of commercial robotic mowers covering compact grounds care, large-area high-efficiency mowing, and precision reel mowing for golf courses and professional sports fields, debuting globally at GaLaBau 2026 in Nuremberg.
Chinese automotive supplier Minth Group and AgiBot have opened Europe’s first mass-production facility for humanoid robots in Sabac, Serbia, with the first robot rolling off the line during a ceremony attended by Serbian President Vucic, as the facility targets 5,000 annual units and a planned 200 million euro expansion to 20,000 units.
Pollen Robotics and Hugging Face have unveiled Microduck, a $399 open-source 25-centimeter robot with 15 motors, LiDAR, and a camera, capable of walking, recovering from falls, kicking, picking up objects, and rollerblading, with new skills trainable in simulation via reinforcement learning and transferable to the physical robot.
Approximately 2,000 humanoid robots competed at the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, with robot Lightning running 100 meters in 9.32 seconds to beat Usain Bolt’s human world record of 9.58 seconds, while football, boxing, and weightlifting events produced a stream of spectacular failures alongside the milestones.