The manufacturing era of humanoid robots has arrived

Top News

• No Mythos for you: Yesterday’s news that the Mythos AI model is helping bridge a conflict between AI lab Anthropic and the White House has a fresh wrinkle today. Yes, the government wants to use Mythos to harden its systems, and no, it doesn’t want to share access. The Journal reports that the White House opposes a few dozen more companies gaining access to the model. And if you think that’s bad, just ask Europe how it’s feeling.

• AI compute demand is insane: Earnings from Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon made it clear this week that Mag7 spend on GPUs, CPUs, racks, and power will not slow down for the foreseeable future. After beating street estimates, the major AI players let loose a deluge of statistics, metrics, and performance results relating to their artificial intelligence bets. The gist is that demand for AI compute is still in top gear, and the spending will continue until investor morale improves.

• Self-driving hits speedbumps: Alphabet self-driving service Waymo is now serving 500,000 paid rides each week, an astounding result for the yet-nascent robotaxi market. But as the number of self-driving rides grows, so too are complaints that the technology could use a bit more time to bake. I would give the argument greater shrift if it weren’t for my deep, personal knowledge of how humans drive.

TWiST 500

The manufacturing era of humanoid robots has arrived. TWiST500 humanoid robotics startup Figure announced this week that over the last four months, it “scaled manufacturing 24x - from 1 robot/day to 1 robot/hour,” and will “manufacture 55 humanoid robots this week.” Reaching real production volume is a massive milestone for the richly funded startup. (If those robots retail for $25,000 apiece, Figure could generate $600,000 in daily revenue from their current production alone, though the final pricetag for an F.03 robot is not clear at this juncture.)

But wait, there’s more! TWiST recently had TWiST500 company 1X on the program (full recording here) to chat about its Neo robot, its manufacturing operations, and also when we can buy one of its competing humanoid ‘bots. The chat was perfectly timed, it turns out, as 1X notched 10,000 preorders for Neo, and spent the last three months building out “America’s most vertically integrated humanoid robot factory.”

1X claims that its Hayward, California, facility will be able to produce 10,000 Neos per year, while its upcoming San Carlos factory will boost that number up to 100,000 by the end of 2027.

So, should you expect to see humanoid robots out and about in the near future? Nope. But as we inch closer to commercial rollout, it appears that the biggest names in (non-Tesla) humanoid robots are succeeding in getting their dies, cutters, printers, and CNC mills all tuned up and ready to rock. Bring on the future. — Alex

— Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2282: A beanie that reads your thoughts and turns them into text — no surgery required? Jason grills the Sabi co-founders on their noninvasive brain-computer interface, backed by Vinod Khosla, and calls a cap on the whole thing (until he doesn't). This episode of This Week in Startups covers a lot of ground: Jason's tactical tip of the day on making everyone the CEO of their domain, a deep dive into Sabi's thought-to-text beanie, a live demo of AI-powered podcast sidebars built by the TWiST audience, the announcement of a new $5K bounty for an annotation tool, and Jason's big five wellness framework.

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BONUS: In this Saturday special, Lon and Jason run down some of the week’s biggest news. AngelList’s new USVC fund gives retail investors exposure to some of the world’s biggest and most sought-after private companies, but not every social media user likes the terms. Then, how should the US punish a Special Forces soldier who places wagers on America’s raid on Venezuela? Does it matter if he wagered on “his own team”? Finally, Jason’s thoughts on the controversial NYT podcast about “micro-looting” and “social murder.”

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