Agility adds fast charging to work 20 out of 24 hours in the day, while Amazon’s million robots have workers and Washington worried.
On September 30, Anthropic released a report “What work can robots do”. I didn’t realize how many other people had seen it until my feeds started overflowing with reinterpretations this week! You can see a representative sample of ‘robots are stealing our jobs’ reporting in the News section.
Anthropic’s report shared these key findings:
- We present a robot exposure index based on how well robots can perform job tasks today.
- Robots, which we define as autonomous physical machines that sense and act, can perform three-quarters of physical tasks in the US, making up 34% of working hours, but mostly in limited settings. Workers exposed to robots are more likely to be male, less educated, and lower paid. For example, driving and warehouse jobs are highly exposed to currently available robots; nursing and general repair jobs are not, since present-day robots can do little of their work even in highly controlled environments.
- Overall, about 80% of job tasks by working time are exposed to either robots or LLMs. Robots do work where LLMs cannot. The remaining unexposed work is highly interpersonal or requires physical skills that robots today don’t have.
- While robots can do most physical work tasks today, they are much more expensive than human labor. Robots are cost-competitive for just 0.3% of job tasks. If robot price declines follow past trends, it will take 40 years for that share to reach 10%. Beyond price, factors including capabilities, preferences, and regulations pose further barriers to robot automation.
- Over the past 50 years, jobs more exposed to robots experienced greater declines in wages and employment than others. At the same time, job exposure has grown: each year, robots have become able to do about 2% of the physical work they previously couldn’t.
What does Washington think about robots?
Understanding RobotsWashington is worried about China’s robot dominance
a day ago · 22 likes · 8 comments · Kai Williams
Kai Williams shared seven key insights from the SCSP AI+ Robotics summit in Washington, starting with the (to my mind unreasonable) fear that China has more robots than the US and is therefore more advanced. However issue number three on Kai’s list comes back to the ‘robots are stealing our jobs’ debate.
3. Jobs, jobs, jobs
Beyond deployment, perhaps the biggest focus on Wednesday was on human jobs. Specifically, on whether robots would put humans out of work.
This is an old concern. Jeff Burnstein, the president of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), told me that he’s been asked about it “all the time, for forty years.”
But Burnstein argued that robots and automation increase jobs, rather than removing them. “We have charts that show whenever robot sales have gone up in America, unemployment has gone down.” That isn’t just correlation, he thinks. “When companies invest in robots, they also win new business and they invest in people.”
This argument is a variant of the Jevons paradox, the observation that as production grows more efficient, the total resources used can increase if lower prices unlock a large increase in demand. Most of the speakers agreed that this applied to manufacturing labor, sometimes adding a geopolitical twist: if manufacturing in America gets cheap enough because of robots, US market share could increase dramatically. “We’re not competitive today,” said Standard Bots CEO Evan Beard on a panel on scaling. “If we get competitive, then we could bring back a lot of manufacturing, and we could have a lot more jobs.”
In the AI world, many people speculate about robots getting so good that they completely replace human labor. No one at Wednesday’s conference seemed to believe this was likely — or perhaps no one wanted to say so publicly because of the political consequences.
Two of the other hidden insights in Kai’s summary were Agility’s Pras Velagapudi highlighting the value of getting robots into real deployments ahead of anything else.
AND the hypothesis that Washington doesn’t really know what to think about robots because they aren’t very exposed to them, compared to people living in California or Texas, New York or Michigan.
Some other great insights from elsewhere:
“If AI is going to eat the world, hardware will be its teeth,” founding partner Haomiao Huang said announcing the close of Matter Venture Partners second fund at $450 million. Matter Venture Partners is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm backing early-stage startups solving critical challenges across HardTech.
The amount of commercial space leased by robotics companies in 2026 surpassed the cumulative total between 2020 and 2025, according to JLL in The San Francisco Standard.
Zürich becomes Tech Valley not Finance City, with about 150,000 people in tech against 100,000 in finance, and robotics founders are choosing to build there, even without Swiss customers, because the network and talent are available, according to Enzo Wälchli of Operator Circle, former ANYbotics Chief Commercial Officer in the TechDrive podcast.
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Robot Hackathon
Viam and MongoDB are excited to host a two-day, hands-on hackathon for curious, ambitious builders who want to go deep on physical AI. You’ll get a real robot arm and support from Viam experts throughout.
No prior robotics experience is required, just an interest in physical AI and some software experience.
Space is limited! Apply through this page. Applicants will be accepted on a rolling basis.
Prizes
We’ll award prizes to a total of three teams. Each member of a winning team will take home SO-101 pre-assembled robot kits, including: a leader arm, a follower arm, and a camera + Viam credits.
- Gold: SO-101 arm + $5,000 in MongoDB Atlas credits and $5,000 in Viam credits
- Silver: SO-101 arm + $2,500 in MongoDB Atlas credits and $2,500 in Viam credits
- Bronze: SO-101 arm + $1,000 in MongoDB Atlas credits and $1,000 in Viam credits
Nominate for IEEE RAS Awards til Nov 15
Via IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Industry Activities Board
Here’s a lot more detail on the three awards:
- IEEE Robotics and Automation Award for Product Innovation
- This award is given to companies, and has a strong list of previous winners (e.g., iRobot, Aldebaran Robotics, Clearpath Robotics, Fetch Robotics, ANYbotics, and Sarcos Robotics (twice)), but we’ve not had a lot of good applicants/nominations recently.
- We’re going to award (up to) 3 finalists, and RAS/IAB will fund them to come to ICRA 2027 in Seoul
- IEEE Inaba Technical Award for Innovation Leading to Production
- This one focuses on technical innovation leading to a commercialized product. It hasn’t been awarded in several years, due to lack of nominations
- Previous winners include Roland Siegwart, Ken Salisbury, Rodney Brooks, and Masahiro Fujita
- Think of technology & innovation leading to a great product! A great place to recognize folks that may have been in academia and then transferred it to production
- Early Government or Industry Career Award in Robotics and Automation
- Criteria is < 7 years since most advanced academic degree, and focus is on impact in government or industry
- Some previous winners include Nicola Tomatis, Rainer Bischoff, Ayanna Howard, Paolo Pirjanian, and Torsten Kroeger
Silicon Valley Robotics Investor/Startup Database
Every month or two we share updated startup information with accredited investors. These investors write checks anywhere from angel and seed stage to $5-50 million.
- Feedback from the startups – high quality inbound interest from investors.
- Feedback from the investors – incredible depth and range of robotics startups.
Are you a startup fundraising atm? Fill out our “For Investors Eyes Only” sheet.
If you’re an accredited investor and haven’t already signed up for the spreadsheet – Sign up here for great robotics deal flow!
SVR Startup Pitch Showcase Nov 12
We are looking for 8 early stage robotics startups (raised less than $5 million to date) to present your five minute pitches in front of a panel of investors on Nov 12 at the Korea/SV Physical AI Day at Plug’n’Play.
If you enjoy Robots & Startups please restack. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber over at Substack: https://robotsandstartups.substack.com
From Evan Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum:
If Pollen isn’t selling Microducks in four packs for this exact reason, WHAT ARE THEY EVEN DOING!?
[ Pollen ]
Here are a couple of good panels from ICRA 2026 in Vienna, including one on “Impact and Return on Investment on Humanoid Robots” and a second on “Advancing Sustainability in Robotics.”
[ ICRA 2026 ]
Robotics News
Agility adds Nyobolt high-power ultra-fast charging to Digit 5, enabling Digit to keep working more than two shifts in a single day – Agility Robotics
The hopes and risks of bringing humanoid robots into our homes – PBS News
Can a $55,000 robot load the dishwasher? Inside my afternoon with two humanoids housekeepers – MarketWatch
Elon Musk wrangles with the robot hand – Business Insider
‘Infinite Demand For Robots:’ Inside Matter Venture Partners’ $450 Million Bet On Physical AI – Forbes
Rivian CEO: Robotics Is Progressing Much Faster Than You Think – Big Technology
The SF real estate firm betting big on robotics – SF Standard
Industrial Next wants factory robots to switch tasks in minutes, not weeks – TechCrunch
120ft raises angel funding to build autonomous microfactories run by humanoid robots – Silicon Angle
Shimizu completes investment in US robotics startup Noble Machines – SHIMZ
Homebuilder D.R. Horton signs robotics deal for factory production – Realtor
Rivian spinoff Mind Robotics hires ex-Ford EV chief Doug Field – Yahoo Finance
Laplace Intelligence red-teams robots and self-driving cars before they hit the real world – TechCrunch
Spranic builds spatial memory for physical AI – Silicon Angle
Can a $9 Million Robot Save Our Aging Sewers – WSJ
Chinese startup DexForce trains humanoid robots using virtual data to slash costs – Reuters
Reprogramming robots in the mud: How Army Special Ops trains its newrobot technicians – Breaking Defense
The Autonomous Weapons Debate (Still) Has a Definition Problem – Council on Foreign Relations
Will AI-powered autonomous weapons obey the laws of war? – DW.com
Army creates new formations to test autonomous warfare – Federal News Network
US Army to stand up command for unmanned and autonomous warfare – Military Times
A woman was arrested for blocking a delivery robot. her reason for doing it taps into a deep fear – Inc.
Amazon has over 1 million robot workers. What’s next for human employees? – Ars Technica
SoftBank Wants to Buy America’s Biggest Security Guard Company and Use Robots – 24/7 Wall St
Robots and AI could reach 80% of work but rarely cheaply, Anthropic says – TNW
Are these workers training robots to replace them? – NYTimes
When AI and robots work together, Anthropic says these jobs are at risk. Should gardeners worry? – Business Insider
Humxn offers free plumbing and HVAC repairs across three cities to train AI robots – TomsHardware
To train robots, AI companies are paying people in India to film themselves doing chores – NPR KQED
Inside the global race to train robots on human work – Business Insider
Robotics Events
Want to host an event or reach the robotics community?
Many companies are reaching out to Silicon Valley Robotics about hosting events, outreach or hiring and we have a great community network, of people looking for work, of investors interested in deal flow and of technologists interested in learning about the latest advances.
Would you be interested in hosting the next Bots, Bevs and Devs? Or something customized specifically for your goals? Reach out here!
Upcoming Events:
Humanoids 2026 Early Bird Registration – SCCC – deadline Oct 20
Long Horizon Physical AI – San Francisco – Oct 20 -21 (use SVR35 discount code)
RobOpsCon26 – Mountain View – daytime Oct 22
Robotics Evening with Intel – Mountain View – Oct 22 (invite/application only)
ROS By-the-Bay – Mountain View – Oct 22
Voxel51 Physical AI Workshop and Meetup – Menlo Park – Oct 27
Voxel51 Physical AI Workshop and Meetup – SF – Oct 28
Viam Robot Hackathon – Mountain View – Oct 29
Bay Area Robotics Symposium – Berkeley – Oct 30
Humanoids 2026 competition participation – SCCC – deadline Oct 31
Bots, Bevs & Devs – tbd – Nov4
SVR Startup Pitch Showcase (Apply) at Korea/SV Physical AI Demo Day – Nov 12
SRI celebrates two new IEEE milestones – Computer History Museum – Nov 13
FUSE – San Francisco – Nov 19 (use SVR30% discount code or look for special offer in your SVR member email)
Bots, Bevs & Devs – tbd – Dec 2
IEEE Humanoids 2026 – SCCC – Dec 6-9
* including SVR Venture and Manufacturing Summits – Dec 7
Highlights from IEEE Humanoids 2026:
- Registration now open – Early Bird closes on October 20th
- Rong Xiong and Moritz Bächer join keynote speakers, RJ Scaringe and Jerry Pratt
- 63% increase in paper submissions
- 12 Accepted Workshops and Tutorials, plus 3 Special Summits
- NIST Humanoids 2026 Loco-Manipulation Challenge – expressions of interest are open now – deadline Oct 31. Testbed humanoids are available thanks to Partners Ultimate Bots.
Join the organizing team at Silicon Valley Robotics – bots&beer@svrobo.org
