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Around 30 robots including Agibot A3 humanoids and quadrupeds marched outside Poland’s digital affairs ministry in Warsaw, chanting slogans demanding AI labor market regulation in an event organized by Democratism and met by Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski.

French dental robotics startup Lupin Dental has closed a €15 million Series A led by Fynveur, with Bpifrance participation, to expand its robotic system that automates tooth preparation for veneers under dentist supervision, currently approved for clinical use in the UK and India but not yet cleared in the U.S. or EU.

Unitree Robotics has demonstrated UnifoLM-X2-1.0, a world model that enables its humanoid robot to autonomously decide how to move, evade, and attack in real-time combat without a human operator or pre-scripted movements, describing it as the first fully autonomous humanoid combat driven by a world model.

Figure AI and Nscale have signed a strategic partnership providing Figure with access to up to 100,000 NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs starting in the second half of 2027, in an initial $3.5 billion compute commitment with intent to scale beyond $6 billion, as Figure’s Helix model generates 35 minutes of training data every second through its Index dataset initiative.

IFA 2026 in Berlin featured the highest number of humanoid robots in the trade show’s history, with PrimeBOT Q1, Booster K1, EngineAI T800, Agibot A3, and Zeroth W1 among the platforms demonstrating martial arts, soccer, calligraphy, and home navigation for B2B and emerging B2C markets.

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.