WHAT’S NEXT
The most important news and breakthroughs in robotics this week
Click here to watch Zoox’s long-awaited robotaxi finally hitting the road in Las Vegas. Source: Zoox
1. Unitree swings for the fences with blockbuster IPO plans: The Chinese robotics firm is reportedly gunning for a $7B IPO valuation on Shanghai’s STAR Market, in what could be China’s biggest onshore tech listing in years. The company has attracted major backers, including Alibaba and Tencent, plus a rare personal meeting between founder Wang Xingxing and President Xi Jinping. With annual revenue topping $140M, Unitree is betting investors are ready to buy into humanoid robotics as more than just viral content.
2. Amazon’s Zoox finally hits the road in Las Vegas: The startup just rolled out its long-awaited robotaxi service on the Las Vegas Strip, featuring a radical design where passengers face each other instead of sitting in a traditional car layout. While Waymo still dominates the market, Zoox is betting that building purpose-made robotaxis from scratch (rather than retrofitting regular cars) will win the autonomous vehicle endgame. The service is currently free through the Zoox app. See it in action here.
3. Elon Musk reveals Tesla’s grand plan for Optimus v3: At the All-In Summit this week, Elon Musk revealed that Tesla is putting the finishing touches on Optimus v3, which he claims will pack “manual dexterity comparable to a human”. At scale, Musk believes Tesla can produce the robots for around $20K each, with the AI chip alone making up about $5K-6K of that cost. Musk admitted he spends more mental energy on Optimus than any other project, calling it potentially “the biggest product ever”.
via SuperHuman