Romandy CTO

Weekend Edition
10 May 2026

★ Robotics Special

Hands, half-marathons, and a robot chasing wild boars

Happy Sunday — and welcome to the very first Weekend Edition of Romandy CTO. The plan: every few weeks, you'll get one of these in your inbox. And in this one, we'll be zooming in on robotics.

There was no shortage of material this week. Genesis AI's five-finger humanoid hand cracked eggs, solved a Rubik's Cube, and played piano like it grew up taking lessons. There's also a catch-up section on the robot-vs-human sports demos from the past month that are worth a second look.

★ This Week

Three robotics stories worth your time

Illustration: Romandy CTO · Inspired by Genesis AI

1. Genesis AI goes full-stack with GENE-26.5 and a human-like hand

The French startup just unveiled a foundation model that pilots robots from multiple manufacturers, paired with a five-finger hand designed to collect richer training data than the two-finger grippers most humanoids ship with today. The point of a five-finger hand isn't to look human — it's to gather the kind of dexterous-manipulation data that closes what researchers call the "embodiment gap." The piano was just the showmanship. Watch the demo.

Photo: Familiar Machines & Magic

2. The Roomba founder is back — this time with a robot pet

Colin Angle, who co-founded iRobot, has grabbed attention again with a robotic companion built for emotional connection rather than chores. His new venture, Familiar Machines & Magic, plans to ship next year. It waddles, it learns who you are, and yes, somewhere a Roomba is feeling underappreciated. Watch it move.

Photo: Getty Images / TechCrunch

3. Uber wants to turn its drivers into a giant sensor grid

After abandoning its own self-driving ambitions years ago, Uber has unveiled plans to instrument millions of driver vehicles and become the data layer for the autonomous-vehicle industry. Partners can already run trained models in "shadow mode" against live Uber trips — simulating AV performance without ever putting a self-driving car on the road. A neat reminder that sometimes the smartest play is to stop building the car and start owning the data layer underneath.

★ Robots in Action

Where humanoids are showing up this week

Photo: Lee Jin-man / AP

Motor Monk: a humanoid takes Buddhist vows

A humanoid named Gabi became the first non-human to participate in a Buddhist initiation ceremony in South Korea, joining monks in prayer and pledging devotion. Temple organizers adapted the Five Precepts with help from ChatGPT and Gemini — yes, really. We've officially entered the era where AI helps draft monastic vows for other AIs. Watch the ceremony.

♪

Sing It Out

The humanoid Sophia took the stage with the Baptist University Symphony Orchestra in Hong Kong at an AI-themed gala — her first foray into live classical performance. Reviews were polite. See the performance.

↗

Playing to Win

A decade ago, China spotted the EV wave early, subsidized its way to dominance, and undercut every competitor on price. Morgan Stanley argues it's now running the same playbook in humanoids — Chinese manufacturers already account for ~90% of global humanoid shipments, with costs running 20%+ below foreign equivalents. If you're sourcing hardware in 2027, that math will be hard to ignore.

★ Industry Snapshot

Everything else worth knowing this week

→OpenAI weighs spinning out robotics: The lab reportedly explored carving its robotics unit into a standalone company as it weighs an Alphabet-style structure ahead of a possible IPO.

→California will start ticketing driverless cars: Beginning in July, the state will issue traffic citations directly to operators like Waymo and Tesla when their cars break the rules. The first regulatory bite into AV operations.

→AGIBOT walks the Met Gala red carpet: The A2 humanoid made a surprise appearance in a collaboration with Alexander Wang. Fashion week is now a robotics launch venue. Sure, why not.

→Linkerbot eyes a $6B valuation: The Chinese startup, which claims ~80% of the dexterous-hand market, is targeting a $6B raise. Hand modules are quietly emerging as the highest-margin component in the humanoid stack.

→1X opens 58,000 sq ft NEO factory: The Norwegian-American maker has opened what it calls the most vertically integrated humanoid production facility in the U.S., in Hayward, California.

★ Made in Switzerland

The local angle worth flagging

Neura Robotics moves humanoid R&D to Zurich

German humanoid maker Neura Robotics has opened a 1,800 m² hub on Zollikerstrasse and shifted all R&D for its flagship 4NE-1 humanoid to the Zurich site (production stays in Metzingen). The choice was deliberate: direct proximity to ETH's robotics labs, and a deepening pool of embodied-AI talent that's making Zurich one of Europe's "robotics valleys." Worth tracking if you're hiring in this space — the local market is about to get noisier.

The Swiss robotics stack, briefly

Romandie — Distalmotion (Lausanne, surgical robotics, CHF 120M+ raised in 2025), Ecorobotix (Yverdon-les-Bains, AI precision-agriculture sprayers), Flyability (Lausanne / EPFL spinout, indoor inspection drones), and EPFL's Biorobotics Lab (Auke Ijspeert's team on biology-inspired locomotion).

Zurich & beyond — ANYbotics (industrial quadrupeds, $150M+ raised), Verity (Raffaello D'Andrea's autonomous warehouse-inventory drones, ETH spinout), Wingtra (VTOL mapping drones, ETH spinout), Auterion (drone operating system used in defence and commercial), and ABB's Sevensense acquisition (AI-enabled mobile robots).

The pieces of an actual European robotics ecosystem are already here — and a healthy chunk of it is sitting on this side of the Röstigraben.

★ Robots vs. Humans

A scoreboard catch-up from the past few weeks

Each of these landed over the past few weeks. The pace at which humanoids are closing the gap with elite human athletes is genuinely something — and the leaderboard now spans table tennis, distance running, weightlifting, and basketball.

Marathon — A humanoid built by China's Honor finished the Beijing half-marathon in just over 50 minutes, beating the human world record of 57. Last year's winning robot took 2.5 hours. Watch this year · compare to last year.

Ping-pong — Sony AI's Project Ace became the first autonomous robot to defeat elite human table-tennis players, winning 3 of 5 matches and outscoring humans 16-8 on direct serves. Watch a rally.

Deadlift — Agility Robotics' bipedal Digit pulled a controlled 30 kg (~65 lb) deadlift, learned via thousands of simulated trials. The fun part is just watching it pick the thing up. Watch it lift.

Basketball — Toyota's CUE robot sank a free throw from half-court, nothing but net. A clean showcase of trajectory optimization under physical constraints — also just very satisfying. Watch the shot.

★ Robo Reels

Two clips worth your watchlist

Photo: Leviathan Engineering

A Project Hail Mary fan built a working alien Rocky robot that talks back

Inspired by the upcoming Ryan Gosling film, one fan spent months building a tabletop version of Rocky — the spider-like alien from Andy Weir's novel — using 3D-printed parts, a Raspberry Pi 5, and Gemini for real-time conversation. There are no preset animations; every gesture is generated in context, which makes it feel uncannily alive. It even does the iconic fist bump on request. Frankly, the most charming thing on the internet this week. Watch Rocky come alive.

Source: Vantage / Firstpost

A humanoid robot chased a pack of wild boars through a Warsaw parking lot

A customised Unitree G1 — locally nicknamed Edward Warchocki — was filmed jogging across a Warsaw lot at night, spotting a small group of wild boars, taking off after them, and (after they got away) raising a fist in mock frustration. The clip racked up 3.8 million views on X. Warsaw genuinely does have a wild boar problem. The robot was a stunt, not a pest-control programme. Still — peak 2026 footage. Watch the chase.

★ Quick vote

Should the Weekend Edition stick around?

One click, anonymous. Helps us decide whether this format earns a permanent slot.

Yes — keep them coming

It was OK

Not for me

That's the very first Weekend Edition. Hope it gave you something fun to read with your Sunday coffee.

Bon dimanche, and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

— Romandy CTO

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