The Physical AI Brief goes out to Embodied Collective subscribers on Luma. This is No. 04, sent on November 10, 2026. Subscribe on Luma.
This week the big robot labs started building for other builders. NVIDIA opened GR00T 2 at CoRL. Physical Intelligence showed a self-serve API on top of its π models. 1X pitched a developer platform for NEO. Serve Robotics started selling its fleet stack to other robot makers.
Meanwhile the money kept moving to robots that already work: Zipline, Path Robotics and Skydio together drew $3 billion of investment in a single week.
Just in
NVIDIA opens GR00T 2, a world action model, at CoRL 2026
GR00T 2 running on a humanoid. Video via @yukez on X
NVIDIA released GR00T 2, which it calls an open frontier world action model built on Cosmos, trained on robot data plus 100,000 hours of open human egocentric video. With no task-specific demos it completed 40 of 50 evaluated tasks at least once; with one demo per task it averaged 71% success, and 95% with five. NVIDIA also shipped Isaac Lab 3.0, which reaches up to 2.5x the training throughput of the previous version on a dexterous manipulation benchmark, and says two of its papers are among the six CoRL Best Paper finalists.
"World models as policies" moved from a research debate to downloadable weights. If you're building a robot product, the question is now how much you fine-tune, not whether you train a base model.
Source: NVIDIA, Nov 9 · GR00T 2 whitepaper
This week in Physical AI
1. Zipline raises $1.5B at a $21.5B valuation and adds 300 Walmart sites
Zipline raised $1.5 billion at a $21.5 billion post-money valuation, led by Paradigm, WCM and Layer Global. A new multi-year deal with Walmart adds 300 drone delivery sites. Zipline says it has flown 150 million commercial autonomous miles, with a median delivery time of 19 minutes from checkout in October.
The largest robotics round of the week went to a company with a delivery count, not a demo reel.
Source: Zipline, Nov 5
2. Path Robotics raises $300M to automate the rest of the factory
Path Robotics, which makes autonomous welding robots, raised a $300 million Series E at a $2.45 billion valuation, led by Georgian. The company says annual recurring revenue grew 17x over the past 18 months, and the new money goes into data, compute and models for the work before and after welding.
A narrow job done well, welding, is turning into the wedge for a whole-factory play.
Source: Path Robotics, Nov 10
3. Axon puts $1.2B into Skydio and becomes its public-safety distributor
Axon is investing an additional $1.2 billion in Skydio, in cash and Axon stock, at a $5.2 billion pre-money valuation, and becomes Skydio's exclusive public-safety distributor in the U.S. and Canada. Skydio serves more than 1,500 public-safety customers and expects about $1 billion in bookings this fiscal year.
For robots sold into government, owning the distribution channel can matter as much as the hardware.
Source: Axon press release, Nov 5
4. China blocks SoftBank from buying ABB Robotics' China business
ABB said China's foreign investment security review office has prohibited SoftBank's acquisition of the ABB Robotics business in China. The deal, announced in October 2025, was valued at $5.375 billion. ABB says both sides are still working on the transaction.
Industrial robotics is now being treated as strategic on both sides of the Pacific. Cross-border deals need a China plan from day one.
Source: ABB, Nov 5
Also this week
Serve Robotics starts selling its robot stack to other companies
Q3 revenue was $2.8 million, up 313% year over year, with 917 daily active robots on average. Alongside the results, Serve launched Serve Physical AI Services, which its CEO says makes "the technology behind our fleets" available to other robot makers.
Source: Serve Robotics SEC filing, Nov 5
Amazon's Ring launches a $999.99 security robot
Ring Robotics debuts with Rover Cam, a patrol robot for businesses that ships in the U.S. on Dec 16, and Drone Cam, a $249.99 indoor flying camera planned for Jan 27, 2027, pending FCC authorization.
Source: Amazon, Nov 10
Worth watching
Atlas on a Roll · Boston Dynamics · 2:51. Boston Dynamics swapped Atlas's feet for wheels to stress-test its learned whole-body controller on real motors. Blog post
Physical Intelligence π, Quan Vuong at Runtime 2026 · Modal · 17:47. π's co-founder on what makes a robot model something others can build on, the partner deployments running on it today, and a self-serve fine-tuning API
Neo by 1X, Bernt Børnich at Runtime 2026 · Modal · 12:59. 1X's pitch to developers: data rigs that match NEO's sensors, sim and training tools, open APIs, and a December ship date
Why AI investors are split on the humanoid boom · Imagination in Action · 37:09. USV, Toyota Ventures, Glasswing, UBS and Kleiner Perkins argue about valuations versus deployment timelines. Toyota's bar for a useful robot: it has to work a full shift
Robots on X this week
Figure's F.03 humanoids · @adcock_brett · Nov 7. The most-viewed robot post of the week, close to a million views. Five days earlier he posted new F.03 units rolling out of the BotQ factory
A Xiaomi humanoid works an 8-hour shift · @XiaomiTech_ · Nov 3. A full-size humanoid sorting center-console side covers on the Xiaomi Auto line for eight hours, catching and fixing its own errors
A humanoid you can build for under $15K · @deepakpathak · Nov 5. Pixel and the Pixel-UMI training framework, aimed at letting any lab reproduce mobile dexterous manipulation results
Generalist threads tiny O-rings · @GeneralistAI · Nov 5. GEN-1.5 handling millimeter-scale parts. On Nov 10 they followed with 100 clamshell placements in a row on an engine housing with Foundry Robotics
One GR00T 2 model, three kinds of robots · @yukez · Nov 9. Yuke Zhu shows the same model running parallel grippers, dexterous hands and humanoids
Previously in the brief
- No. 03: The week robots got priced by the hour
- What It Takes to Deploy Robots: 8 lessons from The Deployment Moat
Next up
Post-CoRL 2026: What's Next for Robot Learning? Fri, Nov 13, 6:00 to 9:00 PM at Robotics Center of Silicon Valley, 90 Welsh St, San Francisco. CoRL authors and researchers from Amazon FAR and 1X, less than 24 hours after CoRL wraps in Austin. Every application is reviewed. Request a spot
One ask
Building, deploying or buying robots and looking for someone specific: a pilot site, an integrator, a supplier, an investor? Want to speak, co-host or sponsor? Tell us in this short form, or email partners@embodiedcollective.org. We introduce both sides only after each says yes.
