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Robotics and embodied AI industry investment

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2026-09-05 01:39 UTC → 2026-09-09 10:39 UTC · added removed

The robotics and embodied AI sector is seeing significant investment and infrastructure development. SoftBank Group is negotiating to acquire a majority stake in 1X Technologies, an OpenAI-backed developer of humanoid robots, in a deal that could value the startup at approximately $6 billion. This move follows SoftBank’s acquisition of ABB’s robotics unit and reflects a strategy to integrate artificial intelligence with physical robotics. Concurrently, the data infrastructure required for these technologies is expanding. XDOF, a San Mateo-based startup specializing founded in data pipelines and teleoperation tools for robotics, late 2024 by researchers from UC Berkeley, is reportedly in talks advanced discussions for a Series B funding round at a $1.2 billion valuation. round. The round, which may be led by 8VC, is expected to value the company at approximately $1.2 billion. XDOF provides essential training data pipelines, teleoperation tools, and annotation systems to help AI labs and robotics firms develop collect high-quality motion data for physical task capabilities. tasks. Following a $70 million Series A round in June 2026, the company has seen rapid growth, with annualized revenue reportedly approaching $50 million. The company has also contributed to the field through open-source initiatives, such as the ABC-130K dataset for bimanual robot manipulations. The rising valuation of such firms reflects an industry-wide trend where high-quality movement data has become a critical bottleneck for humanoid robot development, driving massive investments in data infrastructure and large-scale GPU scaling partnerships.

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  1. 2026-09-09 10:39 UTC Robotics and embodied AI industry investment
  2. 2026-09-05 01:39 UTC Robotics and embodied AI industry investment

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