Intrinsic’s flagship product, Flowstate, is a web-based platform that allows users to build robotic applications without writing thousands of lines of code.
essential
google is focusing on robotics as a key bet in artificial intelligence and is adding new robotics partnerships to its belt.
Agile Robots develops intelligent sensor-based robotic arms and humanoid robots. The company announced a partnership with Google DeepMind to integrate Gemini Robotics foundation models with Agile Robots hardware.
“This partnership is built on the belief that applying AI to the physical world is transformative,” said a blog post on Tuesday. “By integrating Agile Robots’ hardware and other AI robotics solutions developed in Germany with Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics foundational model, both teams will be able to improve performance through robot deployment, data collection, model training, and iteration.”
The new partnership means Google sees robotics as one of its big use cases for AI and will gain real-world adoption data to compete with companies such as: Amazon and tesla. It also shows that the company has entered into several robotics partnerships as it focuses on manufacturing as a primary use case.
Munich-based Agile Robots, which already has more than 20,000 robot systems installed around the world, will integrate Google’s technology into existing industrial robots at scale, the company said in a blog post. The partnership will initially focus on use cases in “high-value industries” such as manufacturing operations.
“This research partnership is an important step in bringing the impact of AI to the real world,” Carolina Parada, senior director and head of robotics at Google DeepMind, said in a blog post on Tuesday. He added that agile robots will help Google develop “more advanced AI models for the next generation of robots.”
In mid-2025, Google debuted two new AI models, Gemini Robotics and Gemini Robotics-ER (Extended Reasoning), bringing generative AI to physical movement commands to control robots. Google said in a blog post at the time that it was partnering with Texas-based robot developer Apptronik to “build the next generation of humanoid robots with Gemini 2.0.”
Google’s DeepMind announced in January that it would work with Hyundai Motor Company’s Boston Dynamics, formerly part of Google, to develop new AI models for the Atlas robot.
Last month, Google DeepMind announced that robotics software company Intrinsic, expected to become the “Android of robotics,” would move from the “Other Bets” category to a major company. The company said it will focus on manufacturing and work with Google’s Gemini and infrastructure teams, including potentially helping Google build its own data centers.
An early sign that the company was serious about robotics came in the past year when it made key hires. In November, Google’s DeepMind division hired former Boston Dynamics CTO Aaron Saunders.
But Google’s growing interest in robotics has also sparked skepticism within the company.
Boston Dynamics, for example, has a long-standing contract with the Department of Defense, but Business Insider reports that some DeepMind employees reportedly raised concerns during an all-hands meeting earlier this year.
This trend isn’t unique to Google. Robotics is emerging as a major use case for AI across the technology industry.
Bedrock Robotics, a self-driving construction technology startup founded by Waymo and Segment veterans, raised $270 million in a new funding round in February, valuing the two-year-old startup at $1.75 billion.
The round was led by Valor Atreides AI Fund, CapitalG, Alphabet’s investment arm. It is the venture arm of Nvidia and previously supported 8VC.
