AI NewsAgile Robots becomes the latest robotics company to partner with Google DeepMind

Agile Robots becomes the latest robotics company to partner with Google DeepMind

9:20 PM IST · March 24, 2026

Agile Robots becomes the latest robotics company to partner with Google DeepMind

Agile Robots has landed a partnership with Google DeepMind to develop robots with the artificial intelligence research lab, the latest in a string of robotics company to do so. Munich, Germany-based Agile Robots announced it entered into a strategic research partnership with Google DeepMind on Tuesday. The partnership involves Agile Robots implementing Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics foundation models into its bots and the data being collected by the robots being used to improve the underlying Gemini AI models. The companies will work together to test, fine tune, and deploy robots that use Gemini foundation models in industrial use cases across sectors including electronics manufacturing, automotive, data centers, and logistics. “Agile Robots has already installed over 20,000 robotics solutions worldwide, proving intelligent automation at scale,” Zhaopeng Chen, the co-founder and CEO of Agile Robots, said in the deal’s press release. “The huge opportunity ahead lies in autonomous, intelligent production systems that can transform entire industries. Integrating Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics models into our robotic solutions positions us at the cutting edge of this rapidly growing market.” A spokesperson said the deal was longterm but declined to share further details about duration or pricing. Agile Robots was founded in 2018 and has raised more than $270 million in venture capital funding from investors including the SoftBank Vision Fund, Chinese hardware company Xiaomi, and Midas Group, among others. It’s just the latest robotics hardware company to land a partnership with Google DeepMind to advance its tech. Earlier this year, Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics, the maker of the famous dog-like Spot robot, announced that it wasentering a partnership with Google DeepMindto use the company’s AI foundation models to help develop its upcoming humanoid robot Atlas. Boston Dynamics was previouslyowned by Googlefrom 2013to 2017. Broadly, robotic partnerships are on the rise this year. German robotics startupNeura Robotics announced a partnership with Qualcommin early March that involves Neura Robotics using Qualcomm’s recently announced IQ10 processor series, designed for mobile robots and humanoids, as reference design for future robots. Robots are incredibly complicated on both the hardware and software side so these partnerships make a lot of sense. As companies work to develop bots that can operate autonomously, it makes sense for companies with a specific strong suit — whether that’s hardware, dexterity or software, to name a few — to partner with other companies that have different expertise. As many in the industry, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, considerphysical AI to be the next frontier for the AI market, these partnerships will likely not only continue, but accelerate.

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There aren’t enough rockets for space data centers — Cowboy Space raised $275M to build them

There aren’t enough rockets for space data centers — Cowboy Space raised $275M to build them

The apparently insatiable demand for AI compute has data center entrepreneurs looking to the stars. There’s a key problem: There aren’t enough rockets to put data centers in orbit around Earth, and they’re too expensive. Most of the players are hoping that SpaceX’s Starship — expected to make its twelfth test flight as soon as this weekend— will solve the problem. But once the vehicle is operational it may be years before it is commercially available, given SpaceX’s internal satellite business. Thesame is truefor Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which failed to deliver a satellite during its third launch in April. That leaves space data center schemes either targeting the mid 2030s, like Google Suncatcher, or preparing to start off doing edge processing tasks for space sensors, likeStarcloud. In theory, there’s a third way: “We’re standing up our own rocket program,” Baiju Bhatt, the CEO and founder of Cowboy Space Corporation, told TechCrunch. He expects the first launch before the end of 2028. Today, the company announced the closure of a $275 million Series B round at a post-money valuation of $2 billion, led by earlier backer Index Ventures, as a downpayment on that work. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Construct Capital, IVP, and SAIC also participated. The company had previously raised $80 million from investors, including Index, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and New Enterprise Associates. Bhatt, a co-founder of online stock platform Robinhood, launched this startup in 2024 as Aetherflux, with plans to collect abundant solar energy in space and beam it down to Earth. The idea of space data centers led the company to pivot towards using its electricity while in orbit. Thepractical realitiesof that effort, in turn, led him to a rocket development program, and the company’s new name. Bhatt said he spoke to multiple launch providers to try and find a path where his company would only build satellites, but he couldn’t find enough launch capacity to truly scale an orbital data center business, or do so in a way where the unit economics could compete with terrestrial alternatives. "There's a lot of new rockets that are coming online, but as we look three, four years out, it's still very, very scarce, and I think that you're going to see a lot of the first party rocket providers actually specialize into their own payloads," Bhatt said. Of course, while bringing the rocket in-house is logical, it's also nuts. Only a handful of private companies in the West, mainly SpaceX, Rocket Lab and Arianespace, are consistently launching commercial rockets. Two others, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, have been struggling to drag their vehicles out of development hell for years. A number of startups, including Stoke Space, Firefly Aerospace, and Relativity Space, have worked for years and are still waiting to deliver operational systems. This evolution of the company will also bring Cowboy Space Corporation into direct competition with SpaceX and Blue Origin, the most advanced and well-funded players in the market. "The prize here, and the size of this market, is big enough that there's room for many players to succeed," Bhatt said "I see the demand for AI getting more and more acute, and I see the options on Earth getting more and more limited." One advantage, Bhatt argues, is the company's focus on this single market (data centers), and its unique design. Orbital rockets typically have a booster stage that flies the vehicle to the edge of space, and a second stage that carries the payload and delivers it to orbit. Cowboy Space plans to build its data centers directly into the second stage of its rocket. It's actually a bit of a throw-back: The first US satellite, Explorer 1, was built as the final stage of a rocket, filled with radio equipment and a few scientific instruments. Making the rocket purpose-built only to launch its data-center satellites should simplify the design process. The company expects each satellite to have a mass of 20,000 to 25,000 kilograms and to generate 1 MW of power for just under 800 onboard GPUs. That means its rocket would be slightly more powerful than the SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9, though still smaller than its under-development Starship. Eventually, Bhatt says, he expects the booster to be reusable. Cowboy Space has hired veterans of the space industry, including former Blue Origin propulsion engineer Warren Lamont and former SpaceX launch director Tyler Grinne. The company also plans to build its own rocket engine, the most complex and expensive part of any launch vehicle. Cowboy Space is still working through key development needs, like facilities to test, manufacture and launch its rockets. The new vision comes with a new name for the startup, to emphasize its mission to "power humanity from the high frontier," although Bhatt admits "it gives me a reason to wear a cowboy hat and also grow this sick mustache."

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