SUMMARY
JD.com committed to buying three million robots over five years and XPeng switched on a humanoid assembly line, while FANUC and Google built an arc-welding agent that reads engineering drawings and programs itself. The counterweight arrived the same week: Unitree closed 53% below its post-IPO high and Agility Robotics disclosed $1.8 million of 2025 revenue against a $140 million operating loss. Scale is being ordered faster than it is being earned.
TOP STORIES
Sep 11 — FANUC Accelerates Physical AI in Arc Welding with the New "AI Welding Agent"
Built on Google’s Gemini Enterprise, the agent reads an engineering drawing and generates welding parameters and robot motion programs on its own. Shipments begin by end-December 2026. | FANUC
Sep 9 — Amid China’s AI shift, JD.com bets on 3 million robots to automate logistics
JD.com will acquire three million robots, one million unmanned vehicles and 100,000 delivery drones over five years, centred on its Wolf Robot series, and retrain displaced staff. | South China Morning Post
Sep 9 — Unitree shares down 53% from IPO debut
Shares closed at RMB513.93, roughly 53% below the first-day intraday high and 39% below the August 19 debut close, erasing about $35 billion from the peak valuation. | The Robot Report
Sep 8 — Xpeng activates a production line for its humanoid robot
The first IRON humanoid completed assembly and walked off a line with more than 80% core-process automation. Volume production is still targeted for late 2026, deliveries in 2027. | TechNode
MARKET & FINANCIALS
Sep 11 — Mecka AI nears $500M valuation in Sequoia-led deal amid rush for robot training data
The startup pays people to perform everyday tasks in body sensors, collecting egocentric human-motion data for humanoids. Round size undisclosed; a $60 million Series A closed three months ago. | TechCrunch
Sep 10 — Maven Robotics wants to steal your robot deployment deal
The mixed-palletizing startup left stealth with a $100 million Series A led by RoboStrategy, and plans 250 third-generation dual-arm wheeled warehouse robots. | TechCrunch
Sep 10 — Robotics Startup Skild AI Hits $100 Million in Revenue Run Rate As Customer List Grows
The robot foundation-model company reached a $100 million annualised run rate about ten months after its first commercial deployment, with more than 60 paying customers. | Bloomberg
Sep 10 — Swarmer Enters Into Definitive Agreement to Acquire Ratel Robotics for Up to $224 Million
The cash-and-stock deal for the Ukrainian uncrewed ground vehicle maker reaches $224 million only if every earnout milestone is met; closing awaits customary approvals. | Swarmer
Sep 9 — IDG Capital leads near-$100m seed round for nascent embodied AI startup PHYMI
Founded by Liu Nianqiu, PHYMI raised nearly $100 million with Yunqi Partners, FOSUN RZ Capital, Glory Ventures, Didi Global and Hesai also participating. | DealStreetAsia
Sep 9 — US robotics restrictions could drive more Chinese suppliers toward Europe, warns Exotec
Chief revenue officer Arthur Bellamy said US curbs make Europe relatively more attractive to Chinese manufacturers, who could reach EU buyers through established local brands and integrators. | Robotics & Automation News
Sep 8 — Korean Battery Sector Eyes Humanoid Robots as Next Growth Engine
With EV demand cooling, EcoPro BM and its peers are targeting lightweight high-nickel and all-solid-state cells for humanoids, aiming at solid-state mass production by 2027. | Bloomberg
Sep 8 — Poseidon Aerospace lands $60 million ahead of first pilotless test flight
TQ Ventures led the Series A, following an $11 million seed, ahead of the first flight of the uncrewed Egret cargo aircraft expected by the end of 2026. | TechCrunch
Sep 7 — Dronemaker UForce In Talks For Around $5 Billion Value with Valor Equity-Led Financing
The London maker of air, land and sea drones is discussing roughly $500 million led by Valor Equity Partners at about a $5 billion valuation; terms are not final. | Bloomberg
Sep 7 — Agility Robotics reports $1.8M revenue ahead of humanoid SPAC
A newly public S-4 shows $1.8 million in 2025 net sales against a $140 million operating loss, with Digit deployed at nine customer sites ahead of the Churchill Capital XI merger. | The Robot Report
Sep 7 — MassRobotics shares member survey results around FCC restrictions
Fourteen member companies split evenly — 43% called the FCC robot restrictions beneficial, 43% detrimental — with views tracking each firm’s manufacturing footprint. | The Robot Report
PRODUCT LAUNCHES & BREAKTHROUGHS
Sep 11 — Meituan and McDonald’s open China’s first dedicated drone-delivery route for a restaurant brand
The Shanghai West Bund network uses Meituan’s M-Drone 4L Winch and M-Port 3 stations, promising ten-minute deliveries across nearly 20 restaurant chains. | TechNode
Sep 10 — Pony.ai and Verne Kick Off Fully Driverless Robotaxi Test Rides in Zagreb
Safety operators came out of the cars on a 22-kilometre Zagreb route to the airport, five months after the pair launched Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service with operators aboard. | Pony.ai
Sep 10 — The Missing Piece of Your AI Stack (Spot release 5.2)
Spot 5.2 adds Gemini-powered visual inspection, continuous site scans, autonomous sensing of more than twenty gases, visual vibration analysis and partial-discharge detection. | Boston Dynamics
Sep 10 — KUKA Launches KMF 1500P-CB Autonomous Forklift to Automate Pallet Handling and Boost Productivity
The counterbalance model autonomously detects, lifts and transports open or closed pallets and containers weighing up to 1,500 kilograms, to heights of three metres. | KUKA
Sep 9 — Lyft Begins Offering Waymo Robotaxi Rides on Its App in Nashville
Nashville becomes the first market where Waymo vehicles can be hailed through both the Lyft and Waymo apps; riders may accept or decline a Waymo match. | Bloomberg
Sep 9 — Vention Opens Physical AI Lab to Bridge AI Research and Scalable Industrial Deployment
The Montreal lab, led by Jimmy Li with Cohere’s Joelle Pineau advising, targets robotic manipulation using data from roughly 90 Fortune 500 customers’ plants. | Vention
Sep 9 — 93% accuracy: China builds humanoid robot capable of crop pollination
GEAIR 2.0, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pollinates a tomato blossom in under ten seconds with 92.8% stigma-recognition accuracy, up from 85% in the single-arm original. | Interesting Engineering
Sep 9 — Comau deploys advanced robotic order preparation solution for the EU MASTERLY project
A MyCo collaborative robot with a modular gripper and ROS 2 architecture picks, handles and palletises rigid, soft and porous goods for Decathlon’s e-commerce fulfilment. | Comau
Sep 8 — Video: Humanoid robot learns to autonomously spar and fight without human control
Unitree’s G1 sparred with a human trainer using the UnifoLM-X2-1.0 world-action model, choosing stance, footwork, strikes and dodges in real time without teleoperation. | Interesting Engineering
Sep 8 — Hai Robotics selected to deliver the world’s largest deployment of rack-climbing warehouse robots
More than 1,500 HaiPick Climb robots will serve an unnamed European fashion retailer across a 30,000-square-metre site handling over 24,000 totes an hour. | Hai Robotics
Sep 8 — Whole-body expansion and contraction make a robot seem more alive
MOFU, built by UEC with Sony, uses a Jitterbug mechanism to breathe between 210 and 280 millimetres in height, measurably raising perceived animacy. Published in PLOS ONE. | University of Electro-Communications
Sep 7 — NEURA Robotics and SECO Join Forces to Scale Physical AI from Europe
SECO will design and manufacture Qualcomm Dragonwing-based compute modules for NEURA’s cognitive robots, including the 4NE1 humanoid, with a NEURA Gym planned in Italy. | NEURA Robotics
Sep 7 — World-first AI-backed ultrasound robot completes congenital heart surgery
At the Chinese PLA General Hospital’s Sixth Medical Center, an autonomous ultrasound robot imaged, located and guided occluder deployment to close a 48-year-old patient’s defect. | Interesting Engineering
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