Embodied Ai AI News & updates this week

Humanoid robots are Meta’s next ‘AR-size bet’

www.theverge.com • Yesterday

This is Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. Building humanoid r...

TL;DR

Meta is investing billions of dollars in its robot development, aiming to build a hardware-agnostic software platform that can be licensed to other manufacturers, with a focus on humanoid robots and dexterous manipulation.

Key Takeaways:

Meta is considering approaching robotics similarly to Google, licensing its software platform to other robot manufacturers,
The robotics team led by Marc Whitten and Sangbae Kim is focusing on building a 'world model' that can simulate human-like dexterous behavior
Meta plans to collaborate with its Superintelligence AI lab to develop the necessary software and hardware for its human-like robots

5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed In September: A Better Insulin Patch, Maternal Mental Health Care, And A Non-Humanoid Robot

news.crunchbase.com • Sep 26, 2025

This month most of the startups that caught our attention include a one making a more environmentally friendly fertilizer, a mental health platform fo...

TL;DR

Several non-AI startups secured significant funding in September, including $85M for a cooler insulin patch, $50M for environmentally friendly fertilizer, and $1.5M for a tabletop robot designed to automate repetitive manual work.

Key Takeaways:

The insulin patch market is projected to reach $14 billion by 2034, with patch pumps representing the fastest-growing market segment.
The tabletop robot is priced around $5,000 and can perform tasks such as precision soldering and screwing, cable routing, and light-duty food processing and packaging.
The environmentally friendly fertilizer gets 2% of greenhouse gas emissions and is expected to expand into Europe in a serious and assertive way, with a European market that's larger than in the U.S.