Tesla has raised its 2026 capital expenditure target to over $25 billion, up from a January forecast of more than $20 billion, as CEO Elon Musk accelerates investment in AI infrastructure, self-driving technology, and humanoid robotics.
Pudu Robotics has closed a funding round of nearly USD 150 million, pushing its valuation past USD 1.5 billion and bringing cumulative funding to over USD 300 million, as the Shenzhen-based company targets embodied AI expansion and global market growth.
Xpeng president Brian Gu told Reuters the Chinese EV maker will begin mass production of its flying car in 2027 and plans to bring humanoid robots to market by the final quarter of 2026, adding to an expanding portfolio that includes robotaxis and EV partnerships.
Accenture, SAP, and Vodafone Procure & Connect have completed a humanoid robotics pilot at a warehouse in Duisburg, Germany, where robots autonomously conducted visual inspections and reported findings directly into SAP’s warehouse management system.
Sony’s Ace robotic arm has become the first autonomous system demonstrated to be competitive with elite human table tennis players, according to a study published in Nature, tracking a ball with 10-millisecond latency and winning matches against top-ranked opponents.
At Hannover Messe 2026, German manufacturers and startups showcased AI-powered robots for industrial applications, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz backing wider AI adoption as Germany seeks to close the gap with China and the U.S. in physical AI.
A&K Robotics has closed a CAD $8 million Series A round led by BDC’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and Vantage Futures, funding the expansion of its Cruz autonomous mobility pods into permanent airport deployments globally.
Zoomlion has made the global debut of Robot Ops, an embodied intelligence operating system designed to standardize and accelerate robot deployment across industrial, construction, and logistics applications, at Hannover Messe 2026.
Agibot used its annual partner conference to declare 2026 the first year of large-scale commercial deployment for embodied AI, unveiling five new robotic platforms, eight AI models, and an open-source development architecture called AIMA.
NVIDIA and more than a dozen industrial partners used Hannover Messe 2026 to demonstrate AI-driven manufacturing systems already operating in live production environments, from humanoid robots in electronics factories to vision AI agents on automotive assembly lines.
NEURA Robotics and Amazon Web Services have announced a strategic collaboration to train, validate, and deploy cognitive robots at scale, with Amazon exploring deployment of NEURA systems in select fulfillment centers as a real-world data source for Physical AI development.
DEEPX and Hyundai Motor Group’s Robotics LAB have announced a strategic collaboration to co-develop an ultra-low-power AI computing platform capable of running large-scale generative AI models on-device within robotic systems.
More than 3,000 exhibitors at Hannover Messe 2026 showcased physical, generative, and agentic AI systems moving from demonstration into production, with Siemens, Schneider Electric, NVIDIA, and Microsoft presenting deployments already delivering measurable results on factory floors.
UBTECH has appointed Terra Robotics as its exclusive distributor and strategic partner in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, with an initial batch of Walker series humanoid robots already deployed at ROSSMANN logistics centers.
China Southern Power Grid is training humanoid and quadruped robots to perform electrical inspections and basic maintenance tasks across its network, deploying them in the field as part of a broader push to automate physically demanding grid operations.