The self-driving future grabs a giant shovel

PLUS: Boston Dynamics workers try to block ICE deal

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Jennifer Mossalgue, Rowan Cheung, Shubham Sharma & Zach Mink
October 29, 2026

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Construction’s newest hot asset is a dirt-moving machine with nobody at the controls. Three autonomous-excavator startups have raised $950M in 10 weeks — and Bedrock Robotics just took the biggest scoop.

Also: MIT’s new snake-like robot goes spelunking in your gut, while Boston Dynamics workers push back against an ICE deal.

In today’s robotics rundown:

  • Bedrock Robotics digs up $600M

  • Boston Dynamics workers fight ICE deal

  • MIT built a robot that slithers through your gut

  • Trump puts factory robots on security notice

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

BEDROCK ROBOTICS

Image source: Bedrock Robotics

The Rundown: Bedrock Robotics — the ex-Waymo startup putting excavators to work with nobody in the cab — just raised a $600M Series C at a $4.1B valuation to bring autonomous excavators to construction sites.

The details:

  • The raise brings Bedrock’s total funding to nearly $1B since its 2024 founding and more than doubles its $1.75B valuation from Feb., Bloomberg reports.

  • Founded by ex-Waymo engineers, Bedrock bolts autonomy kits onto excavators so they can dig and move earth with an empty cab.

  • Since August, Bedrock has done paid work on live sites: a Nevada water-treatment plant, a Texas earthmoving job, and a massive project with Zachry.

  • Bedrock is expanding across the U.S. and targeting more complex tasks, larger machines, and eventually coordinated autonomous fleets.

Why it matters: Bedrock says mastering an excavator takes five years or more, a skills bottleneck its autonomous machines could help ease as construction struggles to find operators. Gravis Robotics raised $200M in Aug., and Eka Robotics landed $150M last week, bringing the three companies’ combined fresh funding to $950M in 10 weeks.

BOSTON DYNAMICS

Image source: Radeco

The Rundown: More than 300 Boston Dynamics employees signed a petition asking executives to cut ties with a contract routing the company’s Spot robots to ICE — and leadership told them the sale stands, CNET reports.

The details:

  • The Dept. of Homeland Security awarded the contract to Radeco for four modified Spots, branded Cerberus, with Boston Dynamics providing tech support.

  • The robot dogs feature thermal cameras and robotic arms, built to inspect tunnels and sniff out radiation and toxic gases, all headed to ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit.

  • The petition: Over 300 signatures, nearly half anonymous, per the company. Staff say the deal links them to an agency they accuse of brutalizing civilians.

  • Employees cited the 2025 ICE raid at Hyundai’s Georgia factory, where 475 workers were detained, most of them South Korean.

Why it matters: The signers reportedly represent about one-fifth of the company’s approximately 1,400-person workforce. ICE has yet to disclose where the robots will be deployed or how its agents will be trained, and no U.S. law prohibits federal agencies from using robots like Spot for surveillance.

MEDICAL BOTS

Image source: MIT

The Rundown: MIT and UT Southwestern researchers developed a snake-inspired soft robot that can crawl through the small intestine, potentially making one of the hardest organs to reach easier to examine and treat.

The details:

  • The small intestine runs 20+ ft, making exams slow and technical — doctors rely on balloon-assisted endoscopes to work through its narrow, winding passages.

  • Called BIOSENTER, the robot bends and extends via inflatable chambers, while grips (modeled on snake scales) let it cross slippery intestinal tissue.

  • The joystick-controlled, tethered robot carries tools for imaging, biopsies, polyp removal, and targeted drug delivery.

  • In pig intestines, it covered ~6.5 ft in 11 minutes and handled imaging, tissue sampling, and fluid delivery without visible tissue damage.

Why it matters: The small intestine is one of the hardest organs in gastroenterology to reach, and soft robots like BIOSENTER could make diagnosing and treating it less labor-intensive. It’s still a pig-tested prototype, though, and it has to prove it’s safe and effective in people before it reaches a clinic.

ROBOT POLICY

Image source: Ford

The Rundown: Trump formally declared imported robots and industrial machinery a national security threat on Wednesday — then imposed no tariffs, sending trade negotiators to cut deals instead.

The details:

  • Commerce and the U.S. trade representative must report on talks within 180 days, with tariffs, quotas, fees, and U.S. production incentives all still on the table.

  • The probe, opened in Sept. 2025, covers robots, CNC machine tools, industrial ovens, and cutting equipment from any country, per the White House.

  • Commerce says U.S. makers can’t meet domestic demand — and that machines from “certain foreign entities,” which store sensitive data, carry cyber risks.

  • U.S. carmakers are the country’s biggest buyers of industrial robots, installing around 13,500 in 2025, about 35% of all U.S. installations.

Why it matters: The U.S. wants to bring manufacturing home, but it still relies heavily on imported robots to make that happen. By putting robotics on the national security agenda, Trump could give U.S. robot makers a boost. But future tariffs could also make automation more expensive for the very factories Washington wants to bring back.

QUICK HITS

Physical Intelligence is reportedly in talks to raise at least $1B at a $20B valuation, nearly doubling its previous $11.5B valuation despite having no revenue yet.

Tesla supersized its Houston robotaxi zone ~10x to an estimated 254 square miles, with a Starship-like outline that Elon Musk jokingly calls “just a coincidence.”

Realbotix’s new Echo humanoids come with customizable personalities starting at $11,950 for a tabletop model, with just 250 robots slated for production in 2027.

Foundry raised a $100M Series A to build autonomous factories where AI-driven robots make everything from drones to batteries to satellites.

NHTSA proposed cyan lights that show when a car is driving itself, and would scrap manual lighting controls on driverless vehicles with no steering wheel or pedals.

Kodiak AI secured its first commercial highway driverless-trucking deal, agreeing to supply 75 autonomous trucks to DTL Transport starting in 2028.

Waymo is expanding its driverless taxi service by nearly 250 square miles across five U.S. cities while reportedly planning to double its fleet to 8K vehicles by the end of 2026.

San Francisco startup Dimensional reportedly offered $20 an hour for people to walk robot dogs through city streets to collect real-world data.

London-based startup Machenta, with just 11 employees, raised $40M to develop AI that trains robots entirely in virtual simulations.

California startup Reward AI demoed its OM-1 humanoid autonomously handling deliveries, picking up objects on stairs, mopping floors, and opening refrigerators.

LG Electronics plans to introduce home humanoids around 2030, developing robots and household appliances designed to work together to automate everyday chores.

A surgeon in Florida performed the first fully remote robotic surgery between two U.S. hospitals, marking a milestone in American telesurgery.

That's it for today!

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See you soon,

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