News Summary

Apptronik, an Austin-based robotics startup, has announced a pilot partnership with Jabil to test its Apollo humanoid robot on the factory floor. This comes shortly after the company secured a $350 million Series A financing round aimed at scaling up production. The deal with Jabil marks Apptronik’s second major pilot, following an ongoing partnership with Mercedes-Benz. In this new collaboration, Jabil will not only test the Apollo robot for simple intralogistics and manufacturing tasks but also become a manufacturing partner once the robot is commercially viable. This partnership could potentially lead to humanoid robots building themselves. Apptronik, which has its roots at the University of Texas and has previously worked on NASA’s Valkyrie robot, is aiming to begin manufacturing commercial units by 2026. The company is also developing AI for its humanoid systems in partnership with Google DeepMind.