ELEMENTS bid-only after selection for NEDO's data ecosystem R&D project

Mecka AI has raised $60 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital, with backing from Nvidia, Microsoft's M12 and Qualcomm, as it builds technology to help robots understand and operate in the physical world. CEO and cofounder Josh Gao said robotics is entering a deep learning era in which compute, algorithms and data must come together, and that Mecka's work centers on digitizing the physical world, from the pressure required to interact with objects to how a dropped cup shatters. He said the company's business spans three stacks in robotics: hardware, including force sensors that Mecka designs, manufactures and produces at scale; software; and operations, with Mecka distributing and running logistics internationally to reach different scenarios and edge cases. Gao also noted that Tony Xu, the founder of DoorDash, is among Mecka's backers. He said the new funding will go toward laying infrastructure, including hundreds of gigabytes of upload bandwidth in some regions, and toward hiring top-tier robotics talent across infrastructure, operations and hardware. Gao compared the data challenge to Tesla spending a decade to solve autonomous driving, noting that robotics involves many dozens of degrees of freedom, even within the hand, making the scale of data required exponential.

General Dynamics Land Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, and Primordial Labs announced a master teaming agreement to bring natural language command and control to ground combat vehicles. The collaboration pairs GDLS's combat vehicle design and integration expertise with Anura, Primordial Labs' Natural Language Command and Control software, which lets crews direct on-board systems by stating their goals, objectives and constraints. Under the partnership, Primordial Labs will expand integration of Anura across vehicles in the General Dynamics Land Systems portfolio, including the Abrams tank and next-generation combat vehicles, so crews can express intent in natural language and let Anura act through on-board subsystems such as sensors, displays, communications and uncrewed systems. Because Anura runs entirely at the edge with no cloud reachback, the capabilities remain available in contested, communications-denied environments. Lee Ritholtz, CEO of Primordial Labs, said partnering with GDLS puts Anura on the platforms that define America's armored force, while Keith Barclay, vice president and general manager of U.S. operations at General Dynamics Land Systems, said the integration is about giving any soldier, in any formation, the ability to intuitively command complex systems.

OKSI and Qualcomm Government Technologies, Inc., a division of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., announced a collaboration to deploy OKSI's OMNISCIENCE autonomy software portfolio on Qualcomm technologies. OMNISCIENCE delivers AI/ML-enabled capabilities through computer vision, including visual navigation, object detection and recognition, and mission execution, purpose-built to bring autonomy to unmanned platforms operating in complex, communications-constrained environments. The software portfolio has been optimized for the Qualcomm QCS8550 processor and is designed to scale across Qualcomm Technologies' broader IoT processor portfolio, giving platform developers and defense system integrators a flexible, production-ready path to deploying edge AI capabilities at scale. The collaboration will be showcased at the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting 2026, taking place Oct. 12-14 in Washington, D.C. OKSI CEO Chris HolmesParker said that with OMNISCIENCE on the Qualcomm QCS8550 processor, autonomy stops being a multiyear development program and becomes a design-in decision, while Kim Koro, Senior Vice President of Qualcomm Government Technologies, said the two companies are helping move autonomy beyond demonstrations toward deployable, mission-ready capabilities.

Boston Dynamics, the humanoid robot maker owned by Hyundai Motor Group, has appointed former Amazon executive Rohit Prasad as chief executive officer, effective October 7. Prasad previously served as senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa and Artificial General Intelligence at Amazon, where he spent 12 years helping build Alexa and later led development of the Amazon Nova foundation model family. Boston Dynamics said Prasad will bring his experience in turning AI breakthroughs into commercial products as the company advances its Physical AI strategy and commercializes intelligent robotic systems. He succeeds Robert Playter, who stepped down as CEO in February. Hyundai Motor Group said in January it plans to produce 30,000 robots annually by 2028 and deploy humanoid robots across its manufacturing sites, beginning with Boston Dynamics' Atlas robots at its Georgia factory that year.

Virtuix Holdings Inc. announced that Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman Jan Goetgeluk will highlight the company's consumer growth and expanding defense sales at the 2026 Maxim Growth Summit, held October 13 and 14, 2026 at the Hard Rock Hotel New York. Omni One consumer orders have been running at approximately 3X the prior-year level following the company's June launch of Omni One for Quest in collaboration with Meta. Virtuix has also completed its U.S. Air Force AFWERX Phase I SBIR program, expanded its work in counter-UAS and military training, and sold Omni One systems to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Navy's Morale, Welfare and Recreation Program. In enterprise and robotics, Tesla has placed repeat Omni One Enterprise orders for its Optimus program and Figure AI has also purchased an Omni One Enterprise system, while healthcare initiatives now include deployments and evaluation across the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, autism therapy for children, and rehabilitation applications. Goetgeluk said Virtuix is increasingly becoming much more than a consumer VR company, with the same full-body simulation platform gaining adoption across consumer entertainment, defense training, humanoid robotics, and healthcare.

Movements to form corporate alliances across different industries are gathering pace, centered on physical AI, in which robots and automobiles move autonomously through artificial intelligence. Five companies including the herbal medicine maker Tsumura and the machinery trading firm Yamazen have recently opened a data collection center for physical AI in Narashino City, Chiba Prefecture, where up to 40 robots will repeatedly perform tasks to train robots capable of acting autonomously. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Fanuc, and Yaskawa Electric, Japan's three major robot makers, are partnering with Fujitsu and the American company Nvidia, while about 20 companies including Kyocera, Kobe Steel, and the software developer Alm are pooling data and expertise with the aim of automating the processing techniques of skilled engineers. Noetra, in which 44 companies including SoftBank and NEC participate, is independently developing an AI foundation model that will serve as the brain of physical AI, aiming for practical application in fiscal 2030, and the government has decided to provide more than 380 billion yen in support for the project this fiscal year.