All robotics & autonomy coverage from The Sideline.
Travis Kalanick's robotics holding company Atoms has closed a $1.7 billion funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Uber — the company that ousted him — joining as an investor. The raise signals a bold, if vague, bet on AI-powered physical-world automation.
A weekend rumor about Anthropic acquiring robotics startup Physical Intelligence turned out to have real roots — but OpenAI's own investment stake in the company may complicate any deal before it starts.
DARPA and the U.S. Air Force successfully flew an AI-controlled F-16 under the ACE program—a genuine engineering milestone that still comes with significant caveats about the gap between test conditions and real-world combat.
Every robotics & autonomy piece The Sideline has ever published.
