robotic

FORT Robotics, Inc., dedicated to developing a "Physical Artificial Intelligence Trust Layer" security platform, announced that existing investors have committed to an additional investment of approximately 20 million dollars. Among them, Tiger Global led a financing round of about 10 million dollars (Mark Cuban Companies also participated), and this round of financing is expected to be completed this week.In addition, Tiger Global has also committed to invest 10 million dollars in the previously announced common stock PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity); this PIPE is expected to be completed concurrently with the proposed business combination of FORT and Newbury Street II Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ: NTWO). Including the previously announced PIPE commitments, as of today, the total committed capital related to the proposed business combination with FORT has exceeded 50 million dollars.

According to Bloomberg, informed sources revealed that humanoid robot manufacturer Noetix Robotics has secretly submitted an initial public offering (IPO) application in Hong Kong, aiming to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.The company's official name is Songyan Power Beijing Technology Co., and it may go public as early as next year.

According to the official announcement, Huobi HTX will open AXIS/USDT spot trading and grid trading on October 21 at 21:30 (UTC+8). The AXIS deposit service is now open, and the withdrawal service will open on October 22 at 21:30.It is reported that Axis Robotics is a decentralized robot data collection and training platform. It allows global participants to remotely control virtual robots to complete operational tasks through a browser, collect high-quality trajectory data, and use simulation to enhance and generate diverse training samples for training robot operation models. Users do not need specialized equipment; they can participate with just a keyboard, and data is on-chain to ensure traceability. The technical mechanisms include MuJoCo simulation, IsaacSim enhancement, and more.

BlackRock (BLK.N) launches actively managed robotics-themed ETF.

UPBIT will list Axis Robotics (AXIS) on October 21 at 22:00 and support trading in KRW, BTC, and USDT. AXIS trades on the Base network, and users should be aware of network and trading restrictions.

According to market news, the robotics startup Eka Robotics announced the completion of a $150 million Series A funding round, with a post-money valuation of $1.45 billion, co-led by a16z and F-Prime. The company was founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja.Eka has developed a control architecture that combines force-sensitive grippers with a "vision-force-action" model, distinguishing it from the mainstream "vision-language-action" model. This model utilizes physics simulators and large-scale reinforcement learning training to generate thousands of hours of robotic experience in just a few minutes. According to the company, its robots can grasp approximately 1,500 objects weighing no more than 1 kilogram per hour (compared to about 600 for humans), with a success rate exceeding 95%. The hardware cost of its grippers is less than $1,000, with a rated lifespan of 5 million cycles, aiming to reach the 20 million cycle standard of industrial robotic arms.

Robot AI company Dream Labs announced the completion of a $90 million seed round financing, with investors including B Capital, Kindred Ventures, A.Capital, SV Angel, and Wing VC. The company was founded in 2026 by the former head of the NVIDIA GR00T robotics research team, and the funds will primarily be used for computing power investment, expanding the tasks supported by the model, types of robots, and user scale.Dream Labs also launched Dream API, which can convert robot camera footage and natural language commands into motion control commands. The company claims that its Dream-1 model, through video learning, can adapt to robots from different manufacturers and has already partnered with over 20 hardware partners to support desktop tasks such as object grasping, placement, and folding clothes.

According to The Information, the former head of Tesla (TSLA.O) Optimus is starting a robotics startup that may raise about 100 million dollars.

According to a report by Sina Technology, Faraday Future (abbreviated as FF) announced that its robotics business plans to merge into the NASDAQ-listed company AIxC (which will be renamed FFR) for an independent listing at a valuation of $200 million. FFAI's strategic upgrade will transform it into a Robotaxi sharing network + smart cabin technology operator and Physical AI investment holding company.FF founder and global CEO Jia Yueting stated, "FFAI will merge its robotics business into AIxC and go public independently, and FFAI will release value in a more open and resilient manner." The NASDAQ-listed company AIxC has signed a non-binding Term Sheet with FFAI to merge FFAI's robotics assets and business at a market valuation of $200 million, aiming to become the first pure-play stock in the four-core fully intelligent EAI robotics ecosystem. Specific transaction arrangements are still subject to the final agreement, approval from the special committee of the boards of AIxC and FFAI, regulatory approval, and formal company announcements.

According to Nikkei Asia, Chinese startup Unitree Robotics saw its stock price drop more than 50% from its opening price one month after listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The market capitalization corresponding to the company's opening price reached 66 billion dollars.The report states that as the IPO frenzy subsides, investors are assessing the future of humanoid robots, with retail investors paying closer attention to the potential of humanoid robots. Unitree Robotics is a Chinese robotics startup, with products covering quadrupedal robots and humanoid robots.

According to a report by Reuters, Gao Yang, co-founder and chief scientist of the Chinese humanoid robot startup Spirit AI, stated that humanoid robots could complete most general tasks based on verbal instructions as early as next year, but it will take at least 8 more years to enter households. He mentioned that the brain is the weakest link in the entire robotics technology stack, and it is expected to reach a milestone similar to GPT-3.0 by mid-2027, allowing users to speak to robots in natural language and have them perform a series of reasonable physical actions to attempt to complete tasks.Spirit AI was founded in 2024, has about 300 employees, and raised $670 million in funding within two years, with a valuation of $2.9 billion. The company employs about 1,000 contractors who wear data collection devices at home or in factories, primarily relying on real-world data for training. The success rate for simple tasks in a structured living room environment is 90%. Currently, dozens of Moz1 wheeled humanoid robots are deployed on production lines at CATL and JD.com.Gao Yang stated that the next 1-2 years represent the initial window for industrial applications, and after two years, they can enter commercial service scenarios to perform simple tasks, but entering households will be more challenging. In terms of safety, full-body force control is implemented, and the robots will automatically engage emergency braking when encountering significant interaction forces. High-quality data is the main bottleneck for training the robot's brain.

According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, Shanghai-based embodied haptic company Qianjue Robotics has announced the completion of two rounds of strategic financing totaling hundreds of millions. Previously, Qianjue Robotics had announced the completion of financing at the hundred million level, with investors including embodied intelligence industry players, Tianji Capital, and Jide Electric. Currently, Qianjue's shareholders include financial investment institutions such as Hillhouse Venture Capital, Yuanhe Origin, and Futen Capital, as well as industry players in the embodied and industrial fields like Li Auto, Zhiyuan Robotics, and Jide Electric.This round of funding will focus on product upgrades, business expansion, and industrial implementation, accelerating the iteration and large-scale delivery of high-precision visual and haptic sensors, improving the collection of real interaction data, haptic simulation, and dataset construction, and continuously promoting the research and development of haptic embodied models and haptic world models.

According to Sifted, the head of the robotics division of the French AI unicorn Mistral is seeking to raise 200 million euros for its new startup, planning to develop robotic AI models based on more comprehensive data training to surpass competitors in data quality.Mistral officially established its robotics division last year.

According to Gate market data, the Hong Kong stock market closed with the Hang Seng Index down 0.17% and the Tech Index down 0.76%. Youdi Robotics rose 153% on its first day of listing, Lenovo Group and Weichai Power rose over 6%, while Haidilao fell over 9%.

Xiaopeng Robotics production line officially launched today. The world's first advanced general-purpose humanoid robot completed automated assembly and autonomously walked off the production line, marking a key leap for Xiaopeng Robotics from research and development to production manufacturing.This production line is independently designed and developed by Xiaopeng, deeply integrating the mature quality systems of the automotive industry with the precision manufacturing of humanoid robots, achieving an automation rate of over 80% in core processes. The Xiaopeng robot has 76 degrees of freedom and is equipped with three Turing AI chips, with an effective computing power of 2250 TOPS.The Xiaopeng robot will officially enter large-scale production by the end of this year and will be launched and delivered in 2027.

According to TechCrunch, citing multiple informed sources, less than three months after emerging from stealth mode, the startup XDOF, which specializes in collecting real-world remote control data for training general-purpose robots, is in the late stages of negotiations for a Series B funding round, with an expected valuation of around $1.2 billion. This round of financing is led by 8VC.XDOF was co-founded in 2024 by researchers Philipp Wu (CEO) and Fred Shentu (CTO) from the University of California, Berkeley. The company previously completed a $70 million Series A funding round, with investors including Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and Spark Capital. XDOF did not originally plan to raise funds again so quickly after completing this round, but informed sources say the company's business is growing rapidly, with annual revenue nearing $50 million, thus attracting several venture capital firms to proactively reach out and push for a new funding round.TechCrunch was unable to ascertain the specific amount of this funding round and could not confirm whether the aforementioned $1.2 billion valuation includes the new financing. Informed sources indicated that the transaction terms have not yet been finalized and may still change.

Kuaishou (01024.HK) announced that on August 31, 2026, Beijing Keling entered into joining agreements with the National Artificial Intelligence Fund and Charoen Pokphand Robotics.Accordingly, the National Artificial Intelligence Fund and Charoen Pokphand Robotics each agreed to become additional investors and parties to the capital increase agreement, injecting cash capital of RMB 1.4 billion and approximately USD 19.29 million (equivalent to approximately RMB 131.45 million) into Beijing Keling, respectively.

Xpeng Motors (NYSE: XPEV) robotics subsidiary has signed a share purchase agreement with investors, aiming to raise over $900 million, with a post-investment valuation exceeding $6.3 billion. Xpeng stated that this is the largest single financing completed by a Chinese company in the robotics field to date. The financing round was led by IDG Capital, with strategic follow-on investments from Tencent and Alibaba, and participation from Gao Rong Capital and others.In terms of financing structure, external investors contributed approximately $600 million, Xpeng's subsidiary contributed about $200 million, and CEO He Xiaopeng along with co-president Gu Hongdi's related entities contributed around $100 million. Xpeng will retain about 82% of the controlling stake and consolidate this business. The funds will be used for the research and development of the flagship humanoid robot IRON, the construction of embodied intelligence and data capabilities, as well as mass production and business expansion aimed for the end of 2026. IRON is equipped with Xpeng's self-developed robotics and AI-specific chips.This subsidiary is part of Xpeng's robotics platform Dogotix (Xpeng robotic dog/humanoid robot related entities). Alibaba and Tencent had previously participated as Pre-IPO investors in the financing of the Chinese humanoid robotics company Yushu Technology.

According to Reuters, Xiaopeng Group's humanoid robot business has signed equity financing agreements with multiple investors, raising over $900 million, with a post-investment valuation exceeding $6.3 billion, setting a record for single-round private equity financing in China's embodied intelligence industry.This round of financing was led by IDG Capital, with participation from Gao Rong Capital, and received support from two strategic investors, Tencent and Alibaba. The funds raised in this round will primarily be used for software and hardware research and development of Xiaopeng's robot business, physical AI model training and iteration, high-quality data collection, construction of a full-chain mass production base, and global commercialization expansion.