Organizations shaping AI

London humanoid-robotics startup founded in 2021 by Shariq Hashme, a former OpenAI employee. Develops Alfie, a domestic humanoid robot for homes, hotels, and hospitals, initially aided by remote human teleoperators.

Research university whose AI work connects machine learning and data modelling with robotics, healthcare, creative technologies, language, and the study of AI risks and social impact.

A research-intensive South African university whose computer-science work includes artificial intelligence, computer vision, robotics, distributed systems and applied machine learning. It also provides educational roots for researchers who later shaped statistical learning.

Scout AI

Scout AI develops Fury, a vision-language-action system that translates commanders' objectives into plans for coordinating autonomous ground and aerial vehicles. Its work focuses on adapting existing military robots to operate together with less manual control.

Autonomous sidewalk delivery-robot company, originally spun out of Uber's Postmates; publicly traded (Nasdaq: SERV).

The Bot Company

Develops general-purpose household robots intended to handle routine physical tasks. Its team combines experience from Cruise, Tesla, OpenAI, Google, Pixar, and large-scale consumer products.

UBTECH Robotics

Robotics company developing the Walker family of industrial and commercial humanoids alongside service, logistics, education, and consumer robots.

Undergraduate service academy educating future Navy and Marine Corps officers. Its robotics work covers autonomous marine, aerial, and ground vehicles, computer vision, control, and human–robot interaction.

Unitree

Chinese robotics company in Hangzhou by Wang Xingxing. Known for affordable quadruped "robot dogs" and, since 2023, low-cost humanoid robots, leading the world in quadruped sales.

Research strengths include cognition-based and cooperative AI, cognitive robotics, human–machine learning, knowledge representation, and systems that can assess their own reasoning and knowledge gaps.

Its AI institute builds on longstanding strengths in computer vision and human-action recognition, bringing together research in machine learning, robotics, natural language processing, healthcare, finance, and autonomous systems.

Computing research spans machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, robotics, autonomous systems, data science, cybersecurity, and human–computer interaction, with links to the Alan Turing Institute.

University of Nottingham

Research university whose AI work spans machine learning, computer vision, robotics, autonomous systems, cybersecurity, human-computer interaction, and the responsible use of AI. It also operates interdisciplinary AI research groups and doctoral training programs.

Developed large-model navigation and simulation systems for autonomous delivery robots, technology Serve Robotics acquired in 2025 to advance its last-mile autonomy stack.

Apptronik

Apptronik is an Austin, Texas-based humanoid robotics company as a spin-out from the Human Centered Robotics Lab at UT Austin, developing the Apollo humanoid robot.

Astribot

Shenzhen-based humanoid-robotics startup founded by Lai Jie, formerly of Tencent's robotics lab. Builds the Astribot S1, a high-speed dual-arm humanoid robot for everyday physical tasks.

Chinese robotics company (CloudMinds) building cloud-connected service and humanoid robots on its HARIX cloud-AI operating system.

Develops mission-critical systems for government and industry, including guidance and navigation, intelligent autonomy, robotics, secure systems, and human–machine interaction for air, ground, undersea, and space operations.

French robotics company, founded in 2022 by Jérôme Monceaux (co-founder of Aldebaran Robotics), maker of the Mirokai character robot.

FieldAI is a robotics company based in Mission Viejo, California, founded by former NASA JPL researcher Ali Agha. It develops physics-first "Field Foundation Models" for embodied AI that run across robots from quadrupeds to humanoids.

Chinese robotics company in Shanghai, that began in rehabilitation robotics and now builds the GR-series humanoid robots.

Kepler Robotics

Chinese humanoid-robotics company (Shanghai Kepler Robotics) building the Forerunner series of "blue-collar" humanoid robots for manufacturing and logistics.

Leju Robotics is a humanoid-robotics company based in Shenzhen, China. It develops the full-size Kuavo humanoid robot, released in 2023 as one of China's first open-source humanoids.

Robotics company, founded in 2024 by serial entrepreneur Jagdeep Singh, building "Direct Video Action" robot foundation models for manufacturing and logistics; emerged from stealth in 2026.