Meta acquires robotics startup to strengthen humanoid AI development

Meta Platforms has acquired humanoid robotics startup Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI) for an undisclosed amount, the company confirmed.

“We acquired Assured Robot Intelligence, a company at the frontier of robotic intelligence designed to enable robots to understand, predict, and adapt to human behaviours in complex and dynamic environments,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

ARI’s team, including its co-founders, will join Meta’s AI division, specifically its Superintelligence Labs research unit. The startup had previously raised a seed round from AIX Ventures, although the size of the funding was not disclosed.

The company had been developing foundational models to enable humanoid robots to perform a wide range of physical tasks, including everyday household work. Co-founder Xiaolong Wang previously worked as a researcher at Nvidia and served as an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, earning multiple industry recognitions. Co-founder Lerrel Pinto, formerly a faculty member at New York University, also co-founded the humanoid robotics startup Fauna Robotics, which Amazon acquired last month. Meta said ARI’s expertise will play a key role in its humanoid robotics efforts. “This team, led by Lerrel Pinto and Xiaolong Wang, will bring deep expertise in how we can design our models and frontier capabilities for robot control and self-learning to whole-body humanoid control,” the company said.

Meta has been investing in humanoid robotics research for several years. Internal discussions revealed in a leaked memo last year outlined ambitions to develop both AI models and hardware for consumer-facing humanoid robots.

Even if Meta ultimately decides not to release a consumer humanoid robot, many researchers believe that achieving Artificial General Intelligence will likely require AI systems to learn in physical environments, where robots gain experience through real-world interaction rather than relying solely on data.

The ARI acquisition, along with Amazon’s earlier purchase of Fauna Robotics, highlights a broader industry push into robotics. Market projections for the sector vary widely — from Goldman Sachs estimating a $38 billion market by 2035 to Morgan Stanley projecting it could reach $5 trillion by 2050 — reflecting both the massive potential and the uncertainty surrounding a technology that is still in its early stages.