Just when you thought the humanoid robot party couldn’t get any more crowded, another player has confidently strode onto the dance floor. Physical Robotics, a sprightly new Norway-based startup, has slipped out from behind the velvet curtain with a freshly secured $4 million seed round. The company was founded by Phuong Nguyen, who brings a rather impressive CV to the table as a co-founder and former Chief Science Officer of Halodi Robotics, the company now better known as the OpenAI-backed 1X Technologies. Nguyen was reportedly the lead inventor of the EVE robot, giving this new venture a significant engineering pedigree straight off the bat.
The fledgling outfit has unveiled a concept for its upper-body humanoid, the π (Pi) robot. While details remain shrouded in mystery, Physical Robotics is aiming to solve what it sees as the “last big hurdle for humanoid robots”: giving them the ability to feel through advanced force control. Their stated mission is to “create a generation of robots that live in harmony with humans,” a noble, if spectacularly broad, ambition shared by literally every other robotics firm on the planet, bless their metallic hearts.
Why This Is Important
In a field now awash with glitzy showcases and nine-figure funding announcements, the emergence of Physical Robotics is significant not because of its comparatively humble seed funding, but because of its intriguing lineage. Nguyen’s departure from 1X occurred just before its major strategic U-turn towards an AI-first, consumer-focused strategy. This new venture appears to be a bold counter-move, focusing on a hardware-first, industrial approach. It suggests a fundamental philosophical chasm among top robotics talent: do you build the brain first and hope the body catches up, or perfect the physical hardware to gather better data for the brain? With a founder who was the mastermind behind a leading competitor’s formative triumphs, Physical Robotics is definitely one for the watchlist, even if its primary contribution for now is simply adding another name to the ever-sprawling humanoid family album.
