The FCC's Foreign Robot Ban Will Hit US Research Hard
An FCC rule puts foreign humanoids, quadrupeds, and wheeled robots on the Covered List. Most US university robotics labs rely on Unitree. The bill is due now.
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Open Source AI Closes the Gap: GLM-5.1 Tops SWE-Bench
GLM-5.1 becomes the first open-weight model to top SWE-Bench Pro. The gap between open and proprietary AI is now just three months.
Open Source AI Wins: China Overtakes US in Downloads, Robotics Explodes, and Hugging Face Hits 2 Million Models
Hugging Face's Spring 2026 report reveals China now leads in AI model downloads, robotics datasets jumped 2,200%, and open-weight models are achieving 10x-1000x cost advantages.
Physical Intelligence Seeks $1 Billion at $11 Billion Valuation
The two-year-old robotics startup would double its valuation in four months as foundation model approach gains investor confidence.
Robotics Hits Its Mega-Round Era: $20B+ Funding Pace in 2026
Skild AI, Physical Intelligence, Mind Robotics, Rhoda AI, and Sunday collectively raise billions as investors bet foundation models will crack physical AI.
Amazon Buys Two Robotics Companies in One Week: From Delivery Dogs to Humanoid Helpers
In the span of five days, Amazon acquired both RIVR (quadruped delivery robots) and Fauna Robotics (humanoid robots). The message: the future of Amazon involves a lot more robots.
Robotics Funding Hits $3B+ in Single Week as VCs Bet on Physical AI
Four startups raised over $3 billion combined, signaling a decisive shift in where AI investment is flowing.
Nvidia GTC 2026: Vera Rubin, NemoClaw, and the $20 Billion Groq Bet
Jensen Huang's keynote today marks Nvidia's biggest pivot in years - from training chips to inference, from cloud to edge, and from prompts to autonomous agents
Surgical Robots Learn to Operate Without Human Help
Two studies in Science Robotics show robots performing gallbladder removal and laparoscopic tasks autonomously, trained by watching surgeon videos.
Alibaba's RynnBrain: Open-Source AI That Teaches Robots to See and Think
Alibaba released RynnBrain, an open-source AI model that gives robots spatial awareness and physical reasoning. It beats Google and Nvidia on 16 benchmarks while running on just 3 billion active parameters.
Apptronik Closes $935M Series A to Mass-Produce Humanoid Robots
Austin startup raises nearly $1 billion with backing from Google, Mercedes-Benz, John Deere, and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund to bring its Apollo humanoid to factories and warehouses.
NASA's Perseverance Rover Just Completed the First AI-Planned Drive on Mars
JPL used Anthropic's Claude to plot a 456-meter route across Jezero Crater. It wrote the commands in Rover Markup Language, identified hazards with 98.4% accuracy, and cut planning time in half.