You’ll have to forgive my poor brain, which is currently operating at around 25% capacity. Almost immediately after flying back from Orlando, our region of the seaboard went into historic blizzard mode (my rabbits are pictured in the aftermath above). Within the next 24 hours, a head cold went and did the equivalent to my immune system.
Ironically, this thing we refer to as “Automated” is still written by a human being every week. Conditions may be treacherous and visibility low, but in 2026, there are no snow days for AI and robotics news. This week, for example, saw big wins amongst the loonies and/or toonies, as a pair of Canadian automation firms (Waabi and Vention) announced big raises.
I never experienced snow days growing up in California — though on several occasions the smog was bad enough to cause the school to cancel all outdoor P.E. sessions for the day. As an adult, a snow day consists of waking up extra early to shovel out the driveway so as to avoid a potential lawsuit.
It's hard to believe we're nearly into February, but the blizzard of robotics news is showing no sign of relenting. 2025 felt unprecedented for the industry in a number of ways, but that was merely a preamble. Just this week, we're speaking with the CEO of Serve Robotics about their unexpected Diligent acquisition, and a pair of former Meta employees about a new research humanoid, and catching up with longtime iRobot CEO Colin Angle about the Roomba maker's wild ride.
Months before Covid-19 hit the United States, Ali Kashani wanted to be nothing more than a cockroach. Serve Robotics’ CEO chuckles knowingly when I suggest it might not be the ideal analogy for a food delivery service.
It was strictly an internal descriptor, he explains, before adding, “Cockroach versus unicorn. Unicorns die in the nuclear winter, cockroaches survive. So, we decided to be a cockroach at the peak.”
For those among us pure enough not to speak venture capital, the term “unicorn” was coined in a 2013 TechCrunch article to refer to the statistical rarity of a startup valued at over $1 billion. The phenomenon has grown more common in the intervening decade-plus, but the industry still utilizes derivations of the term, as even well-funded startups tend to fail nearly all the time.
Kashani’s point is well taken. In addition to rarity, “unicorn” imparts a sense of fragility. If the one-horned equines were made of something more robust, we’d likely not feel so inclined to comment on their scarcity. Roaches, on the other hand, well, the less said, the better.
The household pests were a piece of an internal talk titled, “Winter is Coming.” In spite of the House of Starkness of it all, however, Kashani says the decision to fortify the company’s insectoid exoskeleton was a product of things having gone fairly well up to that point.
“There are times where you're at the peak and the world looks like you're never going to, you're never going to lose,” he says. “Everything you touch turns to gold and everybody's so excited. And then suddenly overnight it all goes away, and you can't raise capital, and you're kind of in a situation where everybody tells you you're wrong, and suddenly everybody's focus is somewhere else?”
A visit to a research lab takes on a surprising museum-quality feel on occasion. For all the cutting-edge research that happens between these walls, ancient equipment has a way of sticking around. This is especially true for robotics. When your facility spends good money on a system, you hang on with dear life.
To this day, you’ll encounter Willow Garage PR-2s, Rethink Baxters, and Nao robots in the wild. Price is a factor. These robots are big investments. Even more troublingly, however, is the fact that no one seems to make them anymore. In each of the above examples, that’s a simple matter of those companies simply not existing.
The bigger underlying issue here, however, seems to be one of economics. These systems are a loss leader. Historically, there haven’t been enough customers to justify their production. It’s no coincidence that many of the robots — like Baxter — were designed for a wholly different purpose.
No one goes into the category expecting to print money. The value prop for manufacturers is that familiar lifehack Apple embraced in the 80s, getting an entire generation of school kids hooked on its product. Certainly, there’s something to be said for ensuring the next wave of robotics engineers learn their trade using your platform.
Founded by two former Meta employees, Fauna Robotics doesn’t expect to be fully sustained by the developer market — but it’s a start. On Tuesday, the Manhattan-based company emerged from stealth to debut its first robot. It is, by all reasonable metrics, a humanoid. Its place in the world, however, is neither moving warehouse totes nor vacuuming floors. Rather, Sprout is aimed at the humans building the robots who might eventually perform those tasks.
Vention this week confirmed a $110 million Series D round aimed at delivering the Quebecois physical AI firm’s promise of “zero-shot automation.” The Montreal-based startup, which marks a decade of existence this year, is utilizing generative AI models to speed up industrial robotics deployment with little-to-no coding knowledge required. "Manufacturers no longer want automation that requires deep expertise and long commissioning cycles,” per founder and CEO, Etienne Lacroix. "They want automation that works as intuitively and reliably as modern software. Physical AI is allowing us to deliver exactly that." The company says the ongoing push to decentralize/reshore manufacturing has been a key piece in drumming up investor and customer interest. In addition to its North American base (primarily the U.S. and Canada, from the sound of it), this latest round will go toward expanding operations in other parts of the globe, with a particular focus on the European market.
Waabi opened Wednesday’s press release by referring to itself as “the leader in Physical AI.” That’s a grandiose claim to the buzziest buzz phrase of the moment, but I suppose the Toronto-based firm just earned itself roughly 750 million or so votes of confidence on that front, with this fresh new Series C. Waabi also calls the round “the largest fundraise in Canadian history,” at $1 billion CAD. By any metric, it’s a massive round for a five-year-old company. That very large influx of funds is going toward expanding its autonomous trucking presence and kickstarting a new push into the world of robotaxis.
“This approach enables — for the first time in the industry — a shared brain across both autonomous trucks and robotaxis, in which the same AI model powers both applications,” founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun says in a post detailing the news. “Waabi’s breakthrough unlocks a rapid and seamless expansion into robotaxis, while ensuring that progress in both autonomous trucks and robotaxis ultimately improves the Waabi Driver’s overall capabilities.”
The robotaxi part of the equation finds Uber making its own additional “milestone-based capital” investment in the firm, as the pair push to develop and deploy 25,000+ Waabi Driver robotaxis. “Waabi's expanded focus on robotaxis marks an important milestone for their team and the AV industry more broadly,” says Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. “We’re very excited to deepen our partnership with Waabi as they significantly scale their Physical AI Platform and enter a new phase of an already remarkable journey.”
New York Robotics has existed as an organization in one form or another for roughly half a decade. It began life as a somewhat informal meetup during the pandemic. When I still lived in the city proper, they brought me on to moderate a panel of NYC startups at Newlab’s Brooklyn Naval Yard location. This week saw the organization go official, in a bid to represent the roughly 100 robotics startups in NYC. In a recent conversation, executive director Jacob Hennessey-Rubin told me that the group’s scope extends beyond that, to include more than 160 in the tristate region (NY, NJ, PA).
The organization is positioning itself as something akin to MassRobotics, Silicon Valley Robotics, and the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, while serving as a kind of connective tissue for different tech hubs up and down the Eastern seaboard. “Our vision is to leverage New York's centrality on the global technology stage to become a leading hub for robotics innovation," Hennessey-Rubin says in a release. "This is a place where researchers, entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and investors can collaborate to shape the future of robotics. By rapidly expanding the ecosystem and elevating robotics as a serious investment class on Wall Street, we're positioning New York for long-term leadership in this transformative sector."
This week also saw Governor Kathy Hochul marking the launch of Radical AI, a new Material Science Lab located in the Navy Yard. Per the Governor, “New York is leading the nation in turning cutting-edge research into real-world innovation and good-paying jobs. Radical AI’s decision to establish the state’s first fully autonomous materials science laboratory at the Brooklyn Navy Yard strengthens our position as a global hub for artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and deep-tech research. By investing in companies that push the boundaries of science and technology, we’re ensuring the discoveries that drive long-term economic growth are developed, scaled, and commercialized in this state.”
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The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) is North America’s largest automation trade association representing more than 1,400 organizations involved in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine vision & imaging, motion control & motors, and related automation technologies.
