Thread by @adcock_brett

Significant progress in AI and Robotics this week.

So, I summarized everything from Google, Microsoft, Alibaba, Figure, Cohere, Unitree, Field AI, Boston Dynamics, Deepseek, and more.

Here's everything you need to know and how to make sense out of it:

Google updated multiple product lines with new AI features, including:

—Pixel phones with 20+ AI features, like magic cues and live call translation
—Agentic capabilities in Search's AI Mode for AI Ultra subscribers
—Gemini for Government at $0.5/agency

Microsoft added a new Copilot function in Excel

This allows users to generate analysis, summaries, data classifications, and more by typing =COPILOT() in their cells

Microsoft has now officially caught up with Google in delivering agentic spreadsheets

Alibaba continued to ship, dropping two new products:

—Qwen-Image-Edit, an AI model for conversational editing of photos
—Qoder, an agentic coding platform that's 100% free to use; currently in public preview

Figure update: we have started making the walking of our humanoids more robust with the new Helix walking controller

As seen in this clip, it enabled our robot to walk across different surfaces without actually using the cameras to see what lies ahead

Cohere launched Command A Reasoning, a new reasoning model for enterprises

It outperforms similar privately deployable rivals, like gpt-oss and DeepSeek R1, on agentic, deep research and safety benchmarks

Also available via Hugging Face

https://x.com/cohere/status/1958542682890047511

China's Unitree teased its next flagship product: a new 180 cm-tall humanoid with 31 joint DoF

It will expand the company's portfolio of bipedal robots, although the launch timeline remains unclear at this stage

https://x.com/UnitreeRobotics/status/1957800790321775011

Field AI raised $405M in funding and introduced Field Foundation Models

These models are designed to grapple with uncertainties and the physical constraints of the real world, enabling safe robot behaviors when navigating in new environments

Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute debuted Large Behavior Models (LBMs)

These policies enabled Atlas to perform multi-step tasks like folding Spot legs, rope tying, or tire manipulation, while adapting to errors in real time

Deepseek launched Deepseek V3.1, an updated hybrid reasoner

It reaches answers in less time vs. DeepSeek-R1-0528 and promises stronger performance in tool use and multi-step agent tasks

On SWE-Bench, it scored 66%, nearing SOTA closed models

https://x.com/deepseek_ai/status/1958417062008918312

South Korean company WIRobotics unveiled ALLEX, a general-purpose humanoid

Built as a modular platform, ALLEX focuses on manipulation with highly dexterous hands, with 15 degrees of freedom (DoF) across fingers and wrist

It can also lift over 30kg

Daxo Robotics demonstrated its flexible hand, where each joint is driven by multiple tendons for robust control, in a new podcast

Each hand uses 108 motors, enabling 108 actively controlled degrees of freedom and infinite passive DoF

Researchers at Stanford debuted HEAD, an autonomous navigation and reaching system

It learns navigation, locomotion, and reaching directly from human motion and vision data, allowing humanoids to move around obstacles and touch an object if needed

IBM and NASA introduced Surya, an open-source AI to predict solar flares

Trained on 9 years of high-res imagery from NASA's SDO, it predicts solar outbursts faster than ever before and beats benchmarks by 16%

We're hiring for BotQ, our new manufacturing division at @Figure_robot:

> Software Test Eng
> End of Line Lead
> Equipment Eng
> Technician
> Manufacturing Eng

Apply here: figure.ai/careers
x.com/adcock_brett/s…

@Figure_robot That's it for this week's AI and Robotics breakdown.

I share the latest research every week, so follow me @adcock_brett for more.

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