New robots, new capabilities. Tracking what's coming for the workforce.
Robotics The Nevada Transportation Authority approved three robotaxi permits unanimously on August 20, opening Clark County to as many as 8,000 driverless vehicles over 12 months. Tesla's own Cybercab chief engineer told the hearing that 5,000 has always been a ceiling and 2,500 would satisfy him.
Robotics Amazon named a year-end target on August 19: Prime Air in nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns, a sixfold expansion. The line to file away sits further down the page, where the company puts a share on what a drone can carry.
Robotics The 2026 World Robot Conference opened August 19 in Beijing's Yizhuang district. The figure disclosed alongside it: Chinese robotics firms above scale booked more than 90B yuan in revenue from January through May, up 26.9%. On the floor, one welding system is already running near-unmanned inside a Korean shipyard.
Robotics Unitree filed its listing notice on August 18 and rings the bell on August 19 at a post-offer valuation of 61B yuan. The number worth reading is not the multiple. It is the 18,000 robots already built, and where they currently go to work.
Robotics Xiaomi's Q2 results on August 18 listed three named workstations in its own EV plant and the humanoid's success rate at each. On the same call, president Lu Weibing said the robot will not be sold as a standalone product.
Robotics We covered SoftBank's talks to buy Gravis Robotics on July 28. The answer came back different: not a purchase, an investment. A record $200M Series A for construction robotics, and the first clear look at what Gravis actually sells.
Robotics Serve Robotics added Grubhub, opened Washington DC and San Jose, and stood up its first micro depot on August 17. What moved was the routing, not the fleet. Uber is gone and the same 2,000 robots are still parked in the same cities.
Robotics Kodiak AI announced a drivered testing permit from the California DMV on August 14, with Aurora Innovation in the same batch. It is stage one of three, and a safety operator still sits behind the wheel. The union's case in Alameda County Superior Court is not about the technology.
Robotics Waymo's Advice Letter No. 4 sat at the California Public Utilities Commission for nearly seven months before clearing on August 14. It covers 12 Northern California counties and six in the south, with Sacramento and San Diego as new markets. The union that would represent those drivers cleared its own threshold a week earlier.
Robotics JD.com reported Q2 on August 13: revenue of RMB346.4B, down 2.9%, and income from operations of RMB4.5B against a RMB0.9B loss a year ago. The same release disclosed thousands of unmanned delivery vehicles in regular operation across more than 20 provinces, plus the first night-time autonomous routes in Shenzhen.
Robotics LG and NVIDIA signed an MOU at NVIDIA's Santa Clara headquarters on August 13. The humanoid got the headline. The wheeled CLOiD got the deployment date, and it lands in a plant already running 200 mobile robots.
Robotics Pony.ai and Uber named a 2,000-vehicle European commitment on August 13, expanding from Zagreb to four more cities. Pony.ai's whole global fleet stood above 1,700 vehicles at the end of Q1.