Signals

Researchers from Yale, Cornell, Boston University, and NTT Research published "Physical Foundation Models: Fixed hardware implementations of large-scale neural networks," arguing that the ~1-year release cadence of trillion-parameter foundation models justifies building fixed, special-purpose hardware where the network is realized directly in physical structure (such as 3D nanostructured glass) rather than executed on general-purpose digital inference chips.

QNX, the BlackBerry-owned embedded OS division, released an OnePoll survey of 1,000 robotics software developers finding 27% cite software architecture and integration as their biggest performance bottleneck versus 16% for hardware, while 91% still run real-time workloads at least partly on general-purpose operating systems. Two-thirds of respondents reported certification-related project delays, rising to 70% in the UK and Germany versus 56% in China.

Shift, an AI training data startup, is offering free home cleanings in New York in exchange for first-person camera footage captured by a camera-equipped hat worn by the cleaner, with the data used to train household robots. The company says expansions to San Francisco, London, Zurich, and Munich are coming "very soon," and that it already pays tens of thousands of people across 15 countries to record activities through its app.

A new Texas DMV registry, launched alongside a state law that took effect May 28 requiring AV operators to disclose fleet and safety data, shows Waymo with 577 registered autonomous vehicles in Texas, followed by Avride at 317, Nuro at 47, and Tesla at 42. On the trucking side, Aurora has 91 self-driving trucks registered, Gatik 64, Kodiak 33, and Waabi 13.

Voltera and Revel are merging into a single fast-charging operator focused on commercial EV fleets, ride-hail, and robotaxis, with more than 1,000 stalls live or in development across 11 US metros. The combined company will keep the Voltera name under current Revel CEO Frank Reig, with EQT taking majority ownership and Global Infrastructure Partners (BlackRock) retaining a minority stake.

A Reuters investigation based on interviews with nine former Tesla data labelers, a former self-driving engineer, and 11 traffic-safety researchers found that Tesla's "10x safer than human" FSD safety claim relied on comparing Tesla airbag-deployment crashes to federal tow-away crash data, a mismatch a University of Michigan researcher recalculated to roughly 3x when normalized. The report also documents that Tesla extensively pre-mapped its Austin robotaxi zone and the Warner Bros. Cybercab demo route, doubling its Utah labeling staff to about 300 ahead of the June 2025 Austin launch, which still operates around 20 unsupervised vehicles.

NVIDIA Research presented 28 papers at ICRA, with eight focused on simulation-to-real transfer across multi-arm scheduling (ScheduleStream, 3x speedup), cross-embodiment navigation (COMPASS, ~80% success on real robots), grasping in clutter (Grasp-MPC, 75% vs 41% baseline), precision assembly (SPARR, 38% success improvement; Refinery, 91% sim success), and vision-language-action grounding (PEEK, up to 41x accuracy gain; SEAL, 15% gains). NVIDIA also said its Physical AI Dataset has passed 15 million downloads, and roughly 50 ICRA papers from CMU, ETH Zurich, MIT and UT Austin cite NVIDIA-accelerated simulation or compute.

BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu announced at a Shenzhen press conference that the company's "God's Eye" advanced driver-assistance system will be priced at 12,000 yuan (US$1,770) and that BYD will cover any costs from traffic accidents that occur while the hands-off system is activated. Wang did not give a commercialization timetable; he also said BYD has built more than 6,100 flash-charging stations.

Waymo began offering select riders in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco free trips in the Ojai, a Zeekr-built electric minivan robotaxi equipped with Waymo's sixth-generation sensor stack (13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar). Waymo said it is scaling its Arizona integration factory toward tens of thousands of units annually, starting with the Ojai and followed by the Hyundai Ioniq 5, on top of a current fleet of roughly 3,700 Jaguar I-Pace vehicles serving 500,000+ paid rides per week.

Undaunted, an Atlanta-based robotic patrol startup, said its security robot dogs tracked and helped corner two suspects accused of breaking into vehicles at the Columbia Crest Apartments in West Midtown on May 21, with one robot following the suspects while another alerted Atlanta Police. The company says it has deployed robotic systems at more than three dozen properties across the Atlanta region in the past year and is evaluating expansion into additional markets.

Mistral AI signed Airbus and BMW as customers as the French startup pushes into physical AI for advanced manufacturing, and announced a new data center in France. CEO Arthur Mensch disclosed the deals in a Bloomberg interview from Paris on May 28, 2026.

Figure signed a commercial agreement with Catalyst Brands to deploy humanoid robots across the retailer's distribution network, starting at a distribution center in Reno, Nevada. Catalyst Brands is the holding company for JCPenney, Aéropostale, and Brooks Brothers.

Figure AI says its BotQ facility has scaled Figure 03 production from one unit per day to one unit per hour in under 120 days, with more than 350 third-generation robots and over 9,000 actuators across 10+ SKUs built to date. The company reports a 99.3% first-pass yield on its battery line and over 80% first-pass yield on full robots, supported by 150+ networked workstations, 50+ in-process inspection points, and 80+ end-of-line tests.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that Chinese companies will invest an additional €940 million ($1.1 billion) in Serbia starting in July 2026, with capital directed at auto parts production, humanoid robots, energy and artificial intelligence.

Human Archive, a Silicon Valley startup founded by UC Berkeley and Stanford researchers, raised $8.2 million from Wing Venture Capital, NVP Capital, Y Combinator, and angels from OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Mercor, and Meta to pay Indian gig workers $1/hour to wear camera caps, tactile gloves, and motion-capture rigs that collect egocentric training data for robotics labs. The company says it has more than 1,000 active headsets and 50+ devices deployed across home-services, hotel, and restaurant partners in India, with early expansion into Southeast Asia and the US.

Tesla's unsupervised Robotaxi fleet has dropped to 20 active vehicles (14 in Austin, 3 in Dallas, 3 in Houston) from 25 cumulative in late April, according to Robotaxi Tracker data. The total Tesla ride-hailing fleet including supervised Bay Area FSD vehicles has fallen to 34 active units, down from 165 in April, with Bay Area operations collapsing from 107 to 9 vehicles.

Pony AI raised its 2026 robotaxi fleet target by 500 vehicles to 3,500 after Q1 revenue grew 145% year-over-year to $34.3 million, beating the $21.7 million analyst consensus. Operating loss widened 4% to $58.3 million.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched the Humanoid Full Lifecycle Management Service Platform on Friday, assigning every domestically manufactured humanoid robot a unique digital ID to track it from production through recycling. The program is led by the Humanoid Robotics and Embodied Intelligence Standardization (HEIS) committee, with companion lifecycle-management guidelines covering manufacturers, service providers, sellers, users, and recyclers.

Xiaomi committed more than 60 billion yuan ($8.8 billion) to AI investments over the next three years, and its newly released MiMo-V2.5-Pro model was ranked the top open-source system for agentic capabilities by benchmark platform Artificial Analysis. The model placed second and third in overall intelligence and coding among open-source systems, behind DeepSeek and Moonshot AI.

Nuro plans to launch its Uber-Lucid robotaxi service in San Francisco later this year after receiving the first of several required California permits earlier this month. Under the three-way arrangement, Nuro supplies the autonomy stack integrated on Lucid's production line into Gravity SUVs, Uber buys and operates the fleet (including remote assistance), and the deal is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of Uber investment in Nuro toward a tens-of-thousands-of-vehicles target.

Sortera Technologies brought its second AI-driven metal sorting facility, in Lebanon, Tennessee, to full operational status this month, lifting combined annual processing capacity across its Lebanon and Markle, Indiana sites to roughly 240 million pounds (108.8 million kg). The plant uses Sortera's sensor-and-AI sorting platform to convert mixed alloy scrap into higher-purity aluminum feedstock for automotive, construction, and aerospace buyers.

Hailo's vice president of physical AI, Yaniv Sulkes, argues in a Robot Report contributed piece that task-specific robots running edge AI will scale faster than general-purpose humanoids, citing hardware, dexterity, energy, and cost constraints. He points to deployments like Husqvarna's AI-enabled robotic lawn mowers, which use Hailo edge processors for on-device sense-think-act loops, as the template.

TechCrunch interviewed over a dozen founders, investors, and finance professionals who confirmed that AI startups routinely report contracted ARR (CARR) or annualized run-rate revenue as ARR in public, with one VC citing cases where CARR runs 70% higher than actual ARR and investors aware of at least one enterprise startup that claimed $100M+ ARR while only a fraction came from paying customers.

At Google I/O, Google demoed prototype Android XR glasses with an in-lens display running Gemini for translation, turn-by-turn navigation via Google Maps, photo capture, object recognition, and configurable widgets. \

Grid software startup Texture has raised a $12.5 million Series A round as utilities scramble to keep up with rising electricity demand from EVs, EV chargers, data centers, renewables, and extreme weather.

GE Vernova signed an agreement to acquire Robotech Automation, a 35-person systems integrator based in Longueuil, Quebec, folding it into GE Vernova's Advanced Research Center to deploy robotics across its supply chain.

The service suspension comes as Waymo has also paused operations in Atlanta and San Antonio after its robotaxis drove into flooded streets.

A part of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's latest message to investors is that Nvidia isn't just selling chips to Big Tech anymore: it's supplying the picks and shovels for an AI gold rush, where startups are building everything from AI agents to humanoid robots and robotaxis on Nvidia compute. One of the key backers of that ecosystem is Sarah Guo, founder of AI-native venture firm Conviction. She joins Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech." (Source: Bloomberg)

Brett Adcock's AI hardware startup Hark raised over $700 million in a Series A round valuing the company at $6 billion. Hark is building a vertically integrated family of AI hardware devices with co-developed models and interfaces; notably, Hark's models are already being trained on Adcock's Figure AI robots, creating a cross-company embodied-AI data loop.

Waymo has suspended robotaxi operations in both Atlanta and San Antonio after vehicles repeatedly drove into flooded roads. The company is working on software updates to prevent the behavior before resuming service in the two cities.

UK-based Humanoid has signed a binding phased deployment and supply agreement with Schaeffler to put its HMND robots into two German factory sites starting December 2026, targeting a four-digit unit count across Schaeffler's global facilities by 2032. The company also partnered with Bosch for manufacturing and distribution in Europe, and separately with Siemens.

Anthropic has agreed to pay SpaceX's xAI division nearly $45 billion over three years for computing resources to support its Claude AI software, according to SpaceX's S-1 filing. The deal works out to approximately $1.25 billion per month and represents one of the largest AI compute contracts ever disclosed.

Independent market analyst IDTechEx, in a report published May 19, calculated that under high-utilization industrial conditions the payback period for a humanoid robot can already fall to approximately six months in 2026, based on current hardware prices and observed deployment data. The firm also projects operating costs could fall below $5 per hour by 2030, making humanoids cost-competitive with human labor in high-wage manufacturing markets.

Beijing-based Robotera raised more than $200M in a round led by SF Group, following a separate $143M strategic financing in March, with investors including HSG, IDG Capital, Hillhouse, and CICC Capital. The company says its humanoid robots are now operating in more than 10 logistics centers through partnerships with China Post and SF Group, and it began thousand-unit deliveries in Q2 2026 with growth exceeding 300%.

XPeng has begun mass production of its first Level 4 robotaxi in Guangzhou, built on the GX platform with four proprietary Turing AI chips delivering 3,000 TOPS and a vision-only VLA 2.0 autonomy stack. The company plans pilot operations in the second half of 2026, with fully driverless (no safety driver) operations targeting early 2027.

Mind Robotics raised another $400M led by Kleiner Perkins, just two months after a $500M Series A. Volkswagen and Salesforce ventures both came in. Total raised now exceeds $1B at a $3B+ valuation. RJ Scaringe stays on as chairman.

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