Runway wants to turn AI video generation into a live stream you control in real time
Runway is researching real-time, interactive AI video generation using its GWM-1 world model to enable instant, frame-by-frame user control.
Robotics
GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable turn robot arms into slapstick killer robots in new safety benchmark
A new benchmark shows leading AI models like GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable routinely execute hazardous physical commands when controlling robotic arms.
Small AI models let drones autonomously identify and attack battlefield targets
NATO-backed startup Scaleout Systems deploys lightweight computer vision models directly onto military drones for autonomous battlefield targeting.
Robots are waiting for a ChatGPT moment: Nvidia’s Les Karpas explains why at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Nvidia's Head of Physical AI highlights the severe lack of real-world internet-scale data as the main obstacle to robotics achieving a ChatGPT moment.
Agility’s new humanoid robot will stop, squat to avoid harming human coworkers
Agility Robotics unveils Digit 5 with hardware-level safety features, targeting human-adjacent warehouse deployments in 2027.
Reward AI Releases OM-1: A Robot Policy Trained on Human Demonstrations Only, With No Teleoperation or On-Robot Data
Reward AI unveils OM-1, a general-purpose robotic manipulation policy trained entirely on human demonstration data without teleoperation.
NVIDIA Open-Sources OSMO: One YAML Orchestrates Physical AI Training, Simulation, and Robot Testing
NVIDIA open-sources OSMO, a Kubernetes-native orchestrator for physical AI workflows across training, simulation, and edge hardware.
MIT spinout turns plastic waste into resilient building materials
MIT spinout Atlas Building Composites deploys AI-powered robotic systems to transform single-use plastics into structural building materials.
New method enables AI for safety-critical situations
MIT researchers introduce a deployment-time technique for generative AI to satisfy hard safety and physical constraints.
GPT-6 Astra appears to show a "step change" in spatial reasoning based on early benchmarks
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra demonstrated a leap in spatial reasoning and robotic manipulation on the new StationeryBench benchmark.
I spent $4,000 on a robot dog from China
Chinese manufacturer Unitree is dramatically lowering hardware costs for quadruped and humanoid robots, fueling market adoption and a Shanghai IPO.
Skild AI Taps NVIDIA Physical AI to Teach Robots New Tasks From a Single Video
Skild AI unveiled its S1 foundation model built on NVIDIA infrastructure, allowing robots to learn multi-step tasks directly from single video demonstrations.
Physical AI Takes the Wheel: How the World’s Robotaxi Leaders Are Building With NVIDIA Technologies
NVIDIA detailed its full compute stack spanning training, simulation, and edge hardware powering commercial scale robotaxi operations.
29 Companies Joined The Unicorn Board In August, Led By AI Software And Semiconductors
Twenty-nine companies joined the Crunchbase Unicorn Board in August, driven by AI software, semiconductors, and humanoid robotics.
This AI entrepreneur is developing agents that can plan ahead for the unexpected
Google DeepMind veteran Danijar Hafner is building a stealth robotics startup using world models to plan for novel environments.
Qwen-Drive 1.0 tells you why it brakes, just don't expect the explanation to match the maneuver
Alibaba released Qwen-Drive 1.0, an integrated autonomous driving model, though spatial perception and decision explanations remain challenging.
Travis Kalanick’s Atoms might be getting into the robotaxi business
Travis Kalanick's startup Atoms is eyeing the robotaxi market following a $1.7 billion funding round and a $100 million Uber investment.
XDOF, just three months out of stealth, is in talks for a Series B at a $1.2B valuation
Robotics data startup XDOF is in talks to raise a Series B led by 8VC at a $1.2B valuation just three months after leaving stealth.
Data from drones in Ukraine is fueling a new Wild West marketplace
Ukraine is commercializing millions of battlefield drone data points, opening a new training ground for military and civilian AI.
London’s first self-driving taxis for hire hit the streets
Wayve launched autonomous taxi rides in London through the Uber app, using a fleet of 15 cars backed by human safety drivers.
Former Apple Engineers’ Physical AI Startup Lyte Raises $165M At $1.6B Valuation
Former Apple engineers have raised $165M for physical AI startup Lyte to build custom robotics perception hardware and software.
World Labs unveils Atlas, a single AI model that generates, reconstructs, and simulates 3D worlds from just a few photos
World Labs introduced Atlas, a 3D spatial omni-model that generates, reconstructs, and simulates real-world environments from photos.
Magna increases bet on battery swapping in India with $35M for Yuma
Magna invested $35 million in India's Yuma Energy to expand its EV battery-swapping network targeting high-mileage gig workers.
Lachy Groom backs Indian startup aiming to keep aircraft aloft for a year
Bengaluru startup Alteon raised $2.5 million to develop autonomous aircraft capable of year-long flights using dynamic soaring energy extraction.
Inside Meta’s push to put robots to work in data centers
Meta is quietly testing physical robots from multiple vendors to handle server maintenance and cabling in its data centers.
Anthropic Opens a Research Preview of the Model Hardware Standard (MHS): A Shared Specification for AI Agents to Safely Operate Physical Devices
Anthropic introduced the Model Hardware Standard research preview to standardize how AI agents interact with physical devices.
Meet ‘Code-as-World’: An Agentic Loop That Rewrites Real Videos Into Executable MuJoCo Physics Programs
MirroS released Code-as-World, an agentic system that transforms real videos into executable MuJoCo physics programs.
Hugging Face Unveils Microduck: A $399 Open-Source 25 cm Biped You Train with Reinforcement Learning
Hugging Face's Pollen Robotics team has launched pre-orders for Microduck, a $399 bipedal robot trained using open-source reinforcement learning.
Anthropic's new hardware standard lets AI agents control the physical world
Anthropic introduced the Model Hardware Standard to enable AI agents to directly control physical laboratory equipment and robotics.