In 1961, the first industrial robot, Unimate, was installed on a General Motors assembly line. From 1966 to 1972, Stanford Research Institute’s Shakey became the first mobile robot to reason about its actions using AI. In 1973, Kawasaki introduced the first robot arm with six electromechanical axes. In 1981, IBM introduced a robotic arm controlled…
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The White House unveiled an AI Action Plan to cement U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence and robotics, including open-source models and reduced regulatory red tape. The plan proposed punishing states with burdensome AI regulations by cutting their federal tech funding. AI advisor David Sacks stressed that the U.S. must win the AI race through innovation,…
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OpenAI delayed its first open-weight model release, initially expected this summer, with CEO Sam Altman saying safety tests require more time and that weights, once released, can’t be pulled back. Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K2, a one-trillion-parameter model that reportedly outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 on several coding benchmarks. At Google I/O 2025, Google rolled out Imagen…
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On July 13, 2025, OpenAI indefinitely postponed the release of its open-weight model to conduct further safety tests, noting weights cannot be pulled back once released. On the same day, Moonshot AI launched Kimi K2, a 1-trillion-parameter open-source model that reportedly outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 on coding and reasoning benchmarks and is optimized for agentic tasks.…
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OpenAI indefinitely postpones the release of its open-source AI model, with Sam Altman saying safety reviews are needed and that once weights are released they can’t be pulled back. Moonshot AI launches Kimi K2, a 1-trillion-parameter model that reportedly outperforms GPT-4.1 on several coding and reasoning benchmarks. Elon Musk’s xAI debuts Grok 4, a multimodal…
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Hexagon unveiled its first industrial humanoid, AEON, a dual-locomotion robot, at the Hexagon LIVE Global event in 2025 to tackle labor shortages in manufacturing and logistics. Wandercraft introduced the Calvin humanoid robot as part of a Renault Group partnership, with Renault taking a minority stake and investing €50 million to co-develop Calvin for Renault factories.…
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In 2024 the value of new industrial robot installations reached $16.5 billion, with over 4.28 million robots operating in factories worldwide. Asia accounted for 70% of new robot installations in 2023, with China alone representing 51% of 2023 installations. In 2025 robotics is being transformed by AI, with analytical AI, Physical AI simulators like NVIDIA’s…
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Amazon Robotics (formerly Kiva Systems) operates over 500,000 mobile robots in its fulfillment centers to power rapid order fulfillment. DJI remains the world’s largest drone manufacturer, commanding over 70% of the global market with flagship Phantom and Mavic series. SoftBank Robotics’ Pepper humanoid, launched in 2014, was the world’s first full-scale consumer-facing humanoid robot and…
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