OpenClaw craze comes to robots

PLUS: Amazon buys Swiss startup Rivr

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Jennifer Mossalgue, Joey Liu, Rowan Cheung, Shubham Sharma & Zach Mink
March 23, 2026

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. China can’t get enough of OpenClaw. The open-source AI agent that colonized laptops is now leaping into robots — powering Unitree humanoids, brand-new home bots, and industrial arms that respond to spoken commands.

Beijing loves the momentum, but not everyone is convinced OpenClaw is ready for physical AI.

In today’s robotics rundown:

  • China is wiring robots with OpenClaw

  • Amazon nabs stair-climbing bot startup Rivr

  • Unitree’s IPO will test the humanoid hype

  • This home robot cleaner comes with a human

  • Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENCLAW

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent taking over laptops, is now being integrated into robots in China — and Beijing regulators are already worried that it could expose data or behave unpredictably, Business Insider reports.

The details:

  • Developers are integrating OpenClaw into Unitree’s G1, enabling it to interpret natural language commands and navigate physical spaces in real time.

  • Chinese robotics giant Ecovacs just unveiled a home bot dubbed Bajie, powered by OpenClaw, at a consumer electronics expo in Shanghai.

  • AgileX Robotics published a guide for integrating OpenClaw with its Nero 7-axis robotic arm, letting users steer it through plain-language commands.

  • Regulators and state media have warned that OpenClaw can expose private data, trigger cyber risks, or take the wrong action if it gets too much access.

Why it matters: China has already surpassed the U.S. in OpenClaw adoption, and the gap is widening as Beijing pushes to diffuse AI across 90% of industries by 2030. But robots are a different category of risk than laptops, and Beijing warns that the same autonomy that makes OpenClaw useful also makes it risky.

AMAZON & RIVR

Image source: Rivr

The Rundown: Amazon just scooped up Rivr, the Zurich-based startup behind a stair-climbing delivery robot, to push deeper into doorstep logistics and physical AI. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The details:

  • Rivr CEO and founder Marko Bjelonic called Rivr a “dog on roller skates,” a quirky shorthand for its four-legged, wheeled delivery bot built for city streets.

  • The company had already been working with Veho on a pilot in Austin last year, with Bjelonic saying he hoped to grow the fleet to 100 bots by 2026.

  • Amazon was already in Rivr’s corner, backing its 2024 seed round; the startup had raised $25M in total and was last valued at $100M.

Why it matters: Rivr gives Amazon a ready-made last-mile robotics testbed, but the bigger question is whether it can turn a niche delivery-bot startup into a scalable edge over rivals like Serve or Coco. For Amazon, the acquisition could shave time and labor off the hardest part of delivery: stairs, curbs, and the final stretch to the door.

UNITREE

Image source: Unitree

The Rundown: Chinese robotics startup Unitree filed for a Shanghai IPO seeking about 4.2B yuan, or $610M, in a move that will test investor appetite for humanoids as the company’s revenue and shipments continue to surge.

The details:

  • Unitree says its revenue jumped 335% in 2025, reaching about $247M, as investor interest in robotics and humanoids accelerated.

  • Humanoids alone have become the company’s main revenue driver, accounting for 51.5% of sales in the first nine months of 2025.

  • Unitree said it shipped 5,500 humanoids in 2025 and more than 30K quadruped robots since 2022.

  • The company has been a key U.S. focal point because its low-cost robot dogs have been bought by universities, police departments, and even the U.S. Army.

Why it matters: Unitree’s IPO will be an early test of whether or not humanoids will attract real industrial demand, even as the company has scaled back from the earlier $7B valuation it once sought. It will also show how much investor capital is still flowing into embodied AI in China, even as the business case remains unproven.

X SQUARE ROBOT

Image source: X Square Robot / X

The Rundown: Shenzhen-based startup X Square Robot teamed up with Chinese services platform 58 to launch what they are calling China’s first consumer home-cleaning robot service — one that pairs a robot with a human cleaner on every job.

The details:

  • Customers booking via the app are met by a human cleaner plus a robot, with the human handling deep cleaning and the robot doing repetitive chores.

  • The Shenzhen rollout is a live pilot; both companies say they’ll expand to additional cities if the hybrid model proves out.

  • X Square Robot raised about $140M in its January A++ round, while its total funding was reported as about $410M, at a reported $1.37B valuation.

  • The robot’s domestic clips — tidying litter boxes and the like — have already circulated on X, with X Square promising more robot skills coming soon.

Why it matters: The Shenzhen pilot is a real-world test of whether embodied AI can move from demo videos into paid home service, not replacing human cleaners but working alongside them. If the hybrid model works, it’s a way to get robots into homes without requiring them to handle the full complexity of domestic work on their own.

QUICK HITS

China built a fingernail-sized atomic clock that could make drones and other military systems navigate more accurately without GPS.

Xpeng created a robotaxi unit to speed up commercialization, with passenger-carrying demo operations planned for the second half of 2026.

CATL is testing a mobile robot that drives to your parked EV and charges it, so drivers do not need to find a fixed charging station.

Zhuoyu Technology, the DJI spinout focused on autonomous driving, is reportedly raising about $290M in funding ahead of a planned Hong Kong listing.

Swarmer, an AI drone software startup, surged more than 1,200% in two days after its IPO, fueled by investor excitement around defense-tech and AI.

Waymo said its robotaxis have passed 170M miles and are involved in 92% fewer serious-injury crashes than human drivers.

A humanoid’s dance performance went off script at a Cupertino Haidilao hot pot restaurant, knocking dishes and utensils around before staff restrained it.

California-based startup RoboForce raised $52M to scale and commercialize its Titan robot, taking its total funding to $67M.

UBTech partnered with Siemens to use digital manufacturing tools to scale humanoid production toward 10K units a year by 2026.

Researchers in Japan built a tomato-harvesting robot that predicts how easy each fruit is to pick and adjusts its approach, boosting success to 81%.

COMMUNITY

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team