<p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">Meta has acquired humanoid robotics startup <a href="https://www.arirobots.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Assured Robot Intelligence</a> (ARI) for an undisclosed sum, the social media giant said.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“We acquired Assured Robot Intelligence, a company at the frontier of robotic intelligence designed to enable robots to understand, predict, and adapt to human behaviors in complex and dynamic environments,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch in an emailed statement.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">ARI’s team, including its co-founders, will join Meta’s AI unit, the Superintelligence Labs research division. ARI had raised an undisclosed seed round from AI seed firm AIX Ventures.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The startup was building foundation models for humanoid robots to perform all types of physical labor such as household chores. Co-founder Xiaolong Wang was previously a researcher at Nvidia, and an associate professor at UC San Diego, with a <a href="https://xiaolonw.github.io/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">list of prestigious awards</a> to his name. Co-founder Lerrel Pinto, who previously taught at NYU and co-founded the kid-size humanoid startup Fauna Robotics before Amazon <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/24/amazon-just-bought-a-startup-making-kid-size-humanoid-robots/">snapped it up</a> last month, has also won a <a href="https://www.lerrelpinto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">string of prestigious awards</a>.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">ARI will help Meta with its humanoid ambitions. “This team, led by Lerrel Pinto and Xiaolong Wang, will bring a deep expertise in how we can design our models and frontier capabilities for robot control and self-learning to whole-body humanoid control.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Meta researchers have <a href="https://ai.meta.com/research/#research-areas" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">been working on humanoid robotics </a>tech for years. A leaked memo from a year ago discussed <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/14/metas-next-big-bet-may-be-humanoid-robotics/">Meta’s ambitions to build such a robot</a>, including AI models and hardware, aimed at consumers.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Even if Meta never releases a consumer humanoid product, many AI experts these days believe that the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI) — the theoretical point at which AI reaches or surpasses human-level intelligence across all domains — will require training AI models in the physical world, where robots learn through direct interaction rather than data alone.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The ARI and Fauna deals reflect a broader industry sprint — one where forecasts vary wildly, from Goldman Sachs’ projection of <a href="https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/the-global-market-for-robots-could-reach-38-billion-by-2035" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">$38 billion</a> by 2035 to Morgan Stanley’s estimate of <a href="https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/humanoid-robot-market-5-trillion-by-2050" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">$5 trillion</a> by 2050 — a spread that reflects both the enormous potential and the uncertainty around tech that’s still finding its footing.</p>
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