BMW Group has deployed Figure AI’s Figure 03 humanoid robot at its Spartanburg plant for a logistics sequencing application, following the successful 11-month Figure 02 deployment that supported production of 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles, as the company expands its humanoid program from body shop to assembly logistics.
MWC Shanghai 2026 opened at the Shanghai New International Expo Center with Honor’s humanoid robots Flash and Vita Boy appearing live on stage, as GSMA Director General Vivek Badrinath named humanoid robotics, the low-altitude economy, and autonomous vehicles as the three most significant frontiers emerging from Asia’s mobile ecosystem.
Agility Robotics has announced a merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI to go public at a $2.5 billion valuation, providing more than $620 million in proceeds to fund commercial expansion of its Digit humanoid robot, backed by over $300 million in existing orders for a new Digit version.
NVIDIA has announced Halos for Robotics, the industry’s first full-stack safety architecture for physical AI systems, drawing on 18,600 engineering years of autonomous vehicle safety development, with Agility Robotics integrating it into Digit as the first commercial humanoid deployment.
Kawasaki Robotics has debuted the RL030N at Automate 2026 in Chicago, an 8-degree-of-freedom robot described as the industry’s first platform designed specifically for physical AI applications, alongside patented Pulseboard weld inspection technology capable of 10x faster inspection speeds.
D-Link has publicly confirmed its entry into robotics for the first time, establishing a dedicated subsidiary focused on AI therapeutic robots with software and platform services rather than hardware, targeting initial shipments exceeding 100,000 units in Q2 2027.
Genesis AI has unveiled Eno, its first general-purpose robot, featuring a wheeled base, height-adjustable articulated tower, and proprietary dexterous hands matched to human hand dimensions, powered by the GENE foundation model and targeting industrial customer deployments by end of 2026.
Boston Dynamics has published a technical breakdown of how Atlas learned to perform soccer drills – including the Ghost Rabona – using professional motion capture data, motion retargeting, and cloud-based reinforcement learning that condenses a year of physical trial and error into 24 hours of simulation.
Neura Robotics has closed a Series C round of up to $1.4 billion led by Tether, the stablecoin issuer behind USDT, with Tether also planning to integrate its Wallet Development Kit directly into Neura’s robotic systems as the companies argue autonomous robots need financial tools.
Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng has assumed direct leadership of the company’s robotics business, effective immediately, as the EV maker targets mass production of its IRON humanoid robot by the end of 2026 and commercial customer delivery from 2027.
BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li has confirmed the company is developing humanoid robots in-house, with its own EV and battery factories as the first deployment target before a planned consumer rollout through BYD’s existing auto dealer network.
LG Group and NVIDIA have signed a broad strategic partnership covering physical AI and robotics, AI data center infrastructure, and autonomous vehicle systems, with Jensen Huang and LG Chairman Kwang Mo Koo meeting in Seoul to formalize the expanded cooperation.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced a dedicated robotics division tasked with developing hardware, controls, and machine learning for humanoid robots, starting with skilled labor on infrastructure projects and scaling toward a personal robot for everyone.
NVIDIA has announced the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot, an open hardware and software platform combining a Unitree H2 Plus chassis, Sharpa dexterous hands, and Jetson Thor onboard compute, targeting frontier humanoid robotics research at institutions including Stanford, ETH Zurich, and UC San Diego.
Tesla is converting its Fremont Model S and Model X line to produce one million Optimus robots annually, but with no consumer sales until late 2027 at the earliest and a $20,000-$30,000 retail price, the company faces a significant unresolved demand question as its automotive gross margins turn negative.