Zoox launches driverless robotaxi service

PLUS: Physical Intelligence eyes $5B valuation

AuthorAuthor

Jennifer Mossalgue & Rowan Cheung
September 11, 2025

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Amazon's Zoox just dropped its robotaxis onto the Las Vegas Strip — four-seat pods with no steering wheel, no pedals, and no resemblance to anything Detroit ever dreamed up.

While Waymo retrofits Jaguars and Tesla promises Model 3s that moonlight as cabs, Zoox is betting the farm on purpose-built vehicles to win the robotaxis wars.

In today’s robotics rundown:

  • Zoox robotaxis launch in Vegas with free rides

  • Physical Intelligence nears $5B valuation

  • Alibaba’s Ant Group unveils first humanoid

  • Hive Robotics nabs $2.3M for robot swarms

  • Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ZOOX

Image source: Zoox

The Rundown: Zoox just rolled out its custom-built robotaxis on the Las Vegas Strip, making the Amazon-owned startup the first to offer fully autonomous rides in vehicles designed from the ground up for driverless operation. And for now, the rides are free.

The details:

  • Zoox’s robotaxi has no steering wheel, pedals, or driver’s seat, with only two rows of seats facing each other for up to four passengers.

  • With all-electric design and bidirectional wheels, Zoox robotaxis can prowl the casino circuit for up to 16 hours on a single charge.

  • Each vehicle bristles with sensors: 18 cameras, 10 radars, 8 lidars, 8 microphones, and 4 thermal sensors, creating a 360-degree sensory bubble.

  • Thanks to Amazon’s deep pockets, the rides are free, at least while the company scales up and awaits regulatory greenlights for paid service.

Why it matters: While Waymo dominates with retrofitted consumer cars across five cities and Tesla promises dual-purpose vehicles, Zoox is going all-in on purpose-built pods that look nothing like traditional cars. With a Hayward factory ready to pump out 10K vehicles annually, Amazon is betting that custom design beats adaptation.

PHYSICAL INTELLIGENCE

Image source: Physical Intelligence

The Rundown: San Francisco's newest AI robotics darling, Physical Intelligence, is reportedly closing in on a monster funding round that would value the company at $5B, according to The Information.

The details:

  • Its core offering, π0, is a generalist foundation model designed to let robots execute complex tasks from natural language commands.

  • Physical Intelligence wants machines that can flip burgers one minute and sort packages the next, without software updates or task programming.

  • Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital, and Lux Capital have already backed the company's previous $400M raise.

  • The startup's technical credibility comes from a team of DeepMind, Tesla, and Google X veterans with proven track records in AI and robotics.

Why it matters: Investors are betting on AI-powered bots as the ultimate Swiss Army knife of labor, with machines that seamlessly jump from factory floors to kitchen counters without custom coding. It's a move to crack open trillion-dollar markets that have been waiting decades for robots that actually work everywhere.

ALIBABA

Image source: Robbyant

The Rundown: Ant Group unveiled its first humanoid, the R1, in Shanghai. According to Bloomberg, it not only follows commands but also thinks through complex service tasks such as cooking, guiding tours, and assisting healthcare workers.

The details:

  • Powered by Ant's proprietary large language model, the R1 plans multi-step workflows, learns from mistakes, and adapts to new situations autonomously.

  • Shanghai Ant Lingbo Technology (aka Robbyant) demoed the bot at a Shanghai tech conference, where it cooked garlic shrimp and organized ingredients.

  • Backed by Alibaba, the R1 uses real-time environmental sensing and AI reasoning to improvise solutions when things don't go according to plan.

  • The robot represents Ant's push beyond fintech into physical AI, leveraging the same machine learning infrastructure that powers Alipay's systems.

Why it matters: The R1 looks to mark a major step in bringing advanced AI into real-world service roles, with potential to transform industries like hospitality and healthcare. It also shows how China’s tech giants are competing to lead in humanoid robotics, pushing the boundaries of AI-driven automation.

HIVE ROBOTICS

Image source: Hive Robotics

The Rundown: Munich-based Hive Robotics, founded a few months ago by Sebastian Mores and Burak Yüksel, just closed a €2M ($2.33M) pre-seed round with a bold promise: turning chaotic robot swarms into synchronized fleets that work as one mind.

The details:

  • Hive’s platform solves the "heterogeneous coordination problem" — getting different robots (drones, rovers, marine bots) to collaborate when GPS fails.

  • The round bankrolls Hive's push to deploy its C3 (Command, Control, Connect) architecture, a unified nervous system for multi-domain robotics.

  • C3 abstracts away the gnarly integration work, letting dissimilar machines share sensor data, coordinate paths, and adapt tactics in real time.

  • Early applications target defense, search-and-rescue, and industrial inspection, where coordinated robot swarms could replace human missions.

Why it matters: Most robotic "swarms" are actually just multiple robots running in parallel, not truly collaborating. Hive is attacking the hardest part: getting machines with different sensors, actuators, and operating systems to think collectively. If they crack it, coordinated robot teams could finally graduate to reliable operational reality.

QUICK HITS

China’s Unitree Robotics is turning up the heat in the humanoid race as it heads toward a blockbuster IPO, reportedly targeting a $7B valuation.

Tesla’s Optimus 2.5 stumbled through a sluggish demo, prompting Elon Musk to downplay expectations while hyping the upcoming V3 as a major leap forward.

Rendezvous Robotics, a space infrastructure startup spun out from MIT's famed TESSERAE research, secured $3M to build autonomous structures in orbit.

Saga Robotics, a Norwegian agri-robotics startup, raised $11.2M to scale the commercial rollout of its autonomous farming platform for grapevines and strawberries.

UBTech Robotics landed a ¥250M ($35M) humanoid robot order, primarily for its Walker S2 model, for an undisclosed major Chinese client.

China’s AI2 Robotics is reportedly planning an IPO within two years, fueled by a new $70M contract to supply 1K+ humanoids to display giant HKC Corporation.

Kodiak Robotics delivered its first factory-built autonomous freight truck, upgraded by Roush Industries with Kodiak’s virtual driver.

Cornell’s PhytoPatholoBot is a next-gen autonomous robot that can scout grapevine diseases in vineyards with near-real-time, human-level accuracy.

COMMUNITY

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