Robot brain builders are pushing out of their GPT-2 era

Physical AI is one of the hottest sectors in venture investing, with companies raising billions to apply the tools that gave us Large Language Models to robotics. That excitement helped deliver a big IPO for Unitree, China’s leading robot maker, which saw the company valued at $66 billion after its arrival on China’s equivalent of the NASDAQ. This week, however, the bottom fell out, and the company lost nearly half of its value. Analysts point to one obvious issue: While the robots’ physical capabilities are improving, they still lack the know-how to actually do value-creating work. At last week’s Actuate conference, a gathering of developers building AI brains for robots, the excitement was clear. The event has tripled in size since it kicked off in 2023, and had 1500 attendees, according