We're all living in a cyberpunk novel now. Unconstrained billionaires have space programs and robot armies. People are falling in love with and marrying AI chatbots. You can make movies where you're the star by typing a few sentences. Companies offer designer babies as a service. We've got brain implants for controlling computers, flying cars, robotic surgery, AI-controlled prosthetic limbs, and millions of drones in the sky. So why is the most effective form of communication still a hand-written note?
Enter Tesla's secret lab at its engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, California, where according to a new scoop from Business Insider, its goal is to record practically every mundane human movement imaginable, performed hundreds of times each day by a tireless crew of dozens of workers. The AI industry is as much powered by armies of human grunts who work behind the scenes to make the tech appear seamless as it is by the actual gigawatts of energy consumed by its enormous data centers.
Inside a glass-walled lab at Tesla's engineering headquarters, dozens of workers act out the motions of everyday life: lifting a cup, wiping a table, pulling open a curtain. They repeat each action hundreds of times during eight-hour shifts, and their work is captured by five cameras attached to their helmet and a heavy backpack. CEO Elon Musk sometimes stops by to watch, and Tesla investors visit regularly for demos. It's like being a "lab rat under a microscope," one former worker told Business Insider. The goal is simple: Teach Optimus, the company's robot, how to move like a human.
Mbodi wants to make training robots easier and quicker with the help of AI agents. The company will be showcasing this tech as one of the Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalists at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. New York-based Mbodi built a cloud-to-edge system, a hybrid computing system using both cloud and local compute, that is designed to integrate into existing robotic tech stacks. The software relies on a multitude of AI agents that communicate with each other to gather the needed information to help a robot learn a task faster.
"We behave differently when we're anxious or when we're experiencing fear, versus when we are feeling courageous. And mice do the same," explained Alexandra Klein, postdoctoral researcher at UCSF, during a lab tour, adding that there are multiple experiments conducted in the lab to analyze a mouse's behavior - all this to understand human brain functions better and potentially cure diseases. The tour even showcased a real mouse brain in a test tube.
Together with ABB Robotics, we will unite world-class technology and talent under our shared vision to fuse Artificial Super Intelligence and robotics - driving a groundbreaking evolution that will propel humanity forward.
Charlotte is the product of innovative minds combining Crest Robotics' advanced robotics with Earthbuilt Technology's unique extrusion and compaction systems. The result is a fully autonomous, spider-like robot that is lightweight and highly adaptable. Charlotte delivers a construction solution that is affordable, fast, and low in carbon emissions. She offers answers to both space-age challenges and real-world housing demands. Designers: Crest Robotics and Earthbuilt Technology Based in Delray Beach, Florida, the digital craftsmanship behind Charlotte makes her more than just a robot.
U.S. technology company Nvidia and Fujitsu, a Japanese telecommunications and computer maker, agreed Friday to work together on artificial intelligence to deliver smart robots and a variety of other innovations using Nvidia's computer chips. "The AI industrial revolution has already begun. Building the infrastructure to power it is essential in Japan and around the world," Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said, hugging his Fujitsu counterpart Takahito Tokita on stage. "Japan can lead the world in AI and robotics," Huang told reporters at a Tokyo hotel.
Traditional video methods [are a] brute-force approach to pixel generation, where you're trying to squeeze motion in a couple of frames to create the illusion of movement, but the model actually doesn't really know or reason about what's going on in that scene, Previous video-generation models had physics that were unlike the real world, he added, which general-purpose world model systems help to address.
In a new essay, he calls this approach "pure fantasy thinking." The problem? Human hands are incredibly sophisticated, packed with about 17,000 specialized touch receptors that no robot comes close to matching. While machine learning transformed speech recognition and image processing, those breakthroughs built on decades of existing technology for capturing the right data. "We don't have such a tradition for touch data," Brooks points out.
The Weekly Notable Startup Funding Report takes us on a trip across various ecosystems in the US, highlighting some of the notable funding activity in the various markets that we track. The notable startup funding rounds for the week ending 9/20/25 featuring funding details for Groq, Divergent, MarqVision, and twenty other deals representing $3.3B in new funding that you need to know about.
A four-legged robot that keeps crawling even after all four of its legs have been hacked off with a chainsaw is the stuff of nightmares for most people. For Deepak Pathak, cofounder and CEO of the startup Skild AI, the dystopian feat of adaptation is an encouraging sign of a new, more general kind of robotic intelligence. "This is something we call an omni-bodied brain," Pathak tells me.
September 2025 will be remembered as the month technology finally caught up with our crazy dreams. Companies across every category seemed to collectively decide that incremental updates were no longer enough. From phones thinner than physics should allow to robots that actually climb stairs, each launch pushed boundaries we didn't even know existed. The timing wasn't coincidental; this felt like a coordinated assault on mediocrity.
For Walmart, it's a priority to quickly stock store shelves with the freshest food possible. In doing so, the nation's largest grocery-store retailer can prevent food waste from eating into its profits, even in an industry known for thin margins. Yasemin Gunay, a managing director at Boston Consulting Group, told Business Insider that retailers and restaurants have historically planned their inventory levels based on their internal data, mostly based on past sales trend data.
The tech company leased a warehouse in the Mission District last month that will serve as a research and development space to advance its autonomous delivery technology, a June letter sent to San Francisco Zoning Administrator Corey Teague shows. "This project reflects a broader commitment to reinvesting in San Francisco's innovation economy and creating pathways for local employment in emerging technologies," the letter said. The 34,325-square-foot building at 1960 Folsom St. is roughly two miles away from DoorDash's headquarters. About 200 people are expected to be employed at the site.
TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 hits Moscone West in San Francisco from October 27 to 29, bringing together 10,000+ startup and VC leaders for three days of bold ideas, groundbreaking tech, and future-shaping conversations. One of the most highly anticipated sessions happening on one of the two AI Stages will spotlight where AI hardware is heading next, featuring a live look at the robotics and autonomous systems pushing boundaries in real time.
Imagine a robot built from 3D-printed parts, tiny motors, and an ordinary marker pen. Each robot is compact and low-cost, driven by two stepper motors with O-rings for wheels and an Arduino Nano as its brain. The pen sits at the center, ready to draw as the robot carefully moves across a whiteboard or a sheet of paper. Early versions moved slowly and carefully drew lines, but the design kept evolving.
