SUMMARY
Scale, not novelty, defined the week. Nikkei reported Toyota weighing 400,000 robots across 60 plants at ¥1 trillion a year, while SoftBank agreed to buy Hyundai's Robotics and AI Institute — its second major robotics purchase of 2026. Agility unveiled Digit 5 for cage-free work and Figure showed Helix 2.5 generalising to 30 unseen homes. Capital kept pace: $4.87 billion flowed into robotics in August, D-Robotics closed $400 million, and Waymo opened Las Vegas while charting Singapore for 2028.
TOP STORIES
Sep 18 — Toyota to deploy 400,000 robots to work alongside factory staff
Nikkei reports Toyota plans about 400,000 humanoid and conventional robots across some 60 plants from 2028 — roughly 150,000 in-house, 250,000 at suppliers — costing ¥1 trillion yearly. | Nikkei Asia
Sep 18 — SoftBank agrees to acquire Robotics and AI Institute
SoftBank will buy Marc Raibert's Cambridge research institute from Hyundai Motor Group. Terms undisclosed; the deal awaits CFIUS review, following SoftBank's pending $5.3 billion purchase of ABB Robotics. | The Robot Report
Sep 17 — Helix 2.5: Zero-Shot 30-Home Generalization
Figure's updated Helix model tidied rooms, folded towels and made beds in 30 unseen homes, reporting 56% zero-shot success against 9% for a scratch-trained baseline. | Figure
Sep 15 — Agility Unveils Digit 5 Humanoid Robot Built for Cooperatively Safe Work at Scale
Digit 5 carries 50 pounds, runs 20-plus hours daily and works cage-free beside people. Agility cited over $300 million in milestone-contingent multi-year orders as of May. | Agility Robotics
MAKET & FINANCIALSR
Sep 18 — D-Robotics raises $400 million in Series C funding
The Sunrise chip developer closed $400 million with the lead investor undisclosed, citing cumulative shipments above eight million units and revenue up several-fold year-on-year. | TechNode
Sep 17 — Robotics investments reach $4.9B in August 2026
August drew $4.87 billion across 162 transactions, half of it into China. Unitree's $905 million IPO and XPENG Robotics' $900 million Series A led. | The Robot Report
Sep 17 — Hello Robotaxi raises about $100 million at nearly $3 billion valuation
Shanghai Guotou Venture Capital led the round for the Hello, Ant Group and CATL joint venture, which began producing its HR1 robotaxi in July. | TechNode
Sep 17 — Samsung's Rainbow Robotics isn't rattled by US robot curbs
August and September shipments slipped after the FCC added foreign advanced robots to its Covered List. The US takes roughly 40% of Korea's robot exports. | The Korea Herald
Sep 17 — Singapore, Next Stop: Bringing Scalable, Safe Autonomous Mobility to the Lion City
Waymo will ship Jaguar I-PACE vehicles to Singapore within months, validate through 2027 with the Land Transport Authority, and start paid public rides in 2028. | Waymo
Sep 17 — Amazon-owned Zoox's 100-robotaxi limit in Nevada is about to disappear
Zoox's Nevada permit ceiling expires September 25, freeing fleet growth. A federal exemption already allows up to 2,500 purpose-built vehicles a year. | TechCrunch
Sep 16 — Drone Startup Zipline in Talks on About $1 Billion Raise at $20 Billion Valuation
The delivery-drone operator is negotiating roughly $1 billion at about $20 billion, nearly tripling its previous mark. No investors named and the round is unclosed. | Bloomberg
Sep 16 — May Mobility is going public in a $1.4B SPAC deal
The autonomous-shuttle operator will merge with ACP Holdings Acquisition Corp, raising up to $337 million and listing as "MAY" around year-end. | TechCrunch
Sep 16 — TLD Robotics Launched as ALVEST Group Acquires EasyMile and TractEasy
ALVEST folded French autonomy developer EasyMile and TractEasy into a new unit spanning 35 active operations, 15 airports and 20 industrial sites. Terms undisclosed. | EasyMile
Sep 14 — Vegas, Deal Us In! We're welcoming riders today
Waymo opened paid robotaxi rides across 24 miles around the Strip, its fifteenth US market, invite-only at launch from a 100,000-strong interest list. | Waymo
PRODUCT LAUNCHES & BREAKTHROUGHS
Sep 18 — Joby Completes First-Ever Fully Autonomous Flight Across the United States
A converted Cessna Caravan flew 3,199 miles from California to North Carolina with a safety pilot who made no inputs, supervised from up to 2,323 miles away. | Joby Aviation
Sep 18 — Whisker-based tactile flight for tiny drones
TU Delft's 3.2-gram whisker array lets palm-sized drones feel their way through darkness using barometric sensors, with the whole pipeline running on a microcontroller. | Nature Communications
Sep 18 — Icarus Robotics flies ISS-bound robot in microgravity for the first time
JOY logged 66 parabolas and 22 minutes of weightlessness on Canadian test flights, exercising its two seven-axis arms ahead of a 2027 station mission. | The Robot Report
Sep 18 — Neptune Medical secures FDA nod for endoscopy robot
The Triton 1 System won 510(k) clearance for diagnostic and therapeutic work throughout the colon, adding a robotic platform to conventional endoscopy suites. | MedTech Dive
Sep 17 — Robotic lab sets up and runs optics experiments on demand
An MIT system aligns mirrors and lenses to micron scale, letting researchers queue and rerun photonics experiments without touching the bench. | MIT News
Sep 16 — AthenaZero: A low-inertia, bimanual robot for dynamic manipulation
The RAI Institute's two-armed platform throws at over 30 metres per second, its low-inertia design trading rigidity for the speed that dynamic catching demands. | Science Robotics
Sep 15 — Einride and Lidl Launch First Autonomous Cab-less Truck on German Public Road
A driverless cab-less truck now runs daily between a Lidl warehouse and store in Edermünde under a first-of-its-kind permit from Germany's KBA. | Einride
Sep 14 — Universal Robots unveils Gen 7, a new platform for industrial automation and physical AI deployment
Opening IMTS 2026, UR showed three g-Series arms, a CB7 controller with 40% more compute, built-in force-torque sensing and an AI-ready tool flange. | Universal Robots
Sep 14 — Unitree launches upgraded G1+ humanoid robot
The RMB 95,000 G1+ adds two neck degrees of freedom, doubles shoulder and waist peak torque, cuts heat by 72% and supports continuous external power. | The Standard
Sep 14 — Pony.ai Unveils New Gen-4 Robotruck in Collaboration with GAC Commercial Vehicle
Debuting at IAA Transportation, the Level 4 electric T9 carries nine lidars and thirteen cameras with bill-of-materials cost down 70% from the prior generation. | Pony.ai
Sep 14 — UBTECH starts 10,000-unit robot factory that can build humanoid every 10 minutes
The 14,000-square-metre Liuzhou plant in Guangxi builds Walker S and Cruzr units at roughly one robot every ten minutes, opening September 12. | Interesting Engineering
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