robots

KB Financial Group announced the establishment of the "KB National Growth Unicorn Scale-up Fund," with a scale of 150 billion Korean won (approximately 108 million USD), fully funded by the group's subsidiaries' own capital, and managed by the KB Securities PE Growth Investment Division. The fund will focus on investing in companies in fields such as AI, semiconductors, secondary batteries, aerospace, mobile transportation, robotics, and biotechnology, aiming to cultivate unicorn companies in cutting-edge strategic industries.This decision was finalized at the "4th Productive Financial Consultation Meeting" held on July 24. KB Financial also formulated a financial support plan in line with the government's "three major super projects," covering support for semiconductors, power infrastructure investment, and physical AI companies and AI data centers. KB Financial plans to focus on discovering local innovative small and medium-sized enterprises through the CIB center and promote a shift in corporate evaluation culture from traditional financial statements and historical performance orientation to a evaluation system based on technological strength and future growth potential.

According to Bloomberg, the humanoid robot startup Walden Robotics, spun off from Toyota's robotics research lab, has completed approximately $300 million in seed funding, with a valuation of $1.1 billion. This round was co-led by Deviation Capital and Toyota Motor Corporation, with participation from Toyota's strategic investment and early-stage venture capital division, as well as Nvidia, Boeing, AE Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and CoreWeave Ventures.Walden is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, producing self-developed hardware, software, and AI models, focusing on deploying general-purpose robots in manufacturing and logistics facilities to handle tasks considered burdensome by workers. Co-founder Russ Tedrake revealed that they have begun selling humanoid robots to clients across multiple industries, including a pilot project at a North American Toyota plant, where the robots perform repetitive tasks such as loading and unloading automotive parts and cleaning equipment. Tedrake previously served as an executive at the Toyota Research Institute and teaches robotics courses at MIT.

According to the Economic Times, the physical AI startup Mowito has completed a $3 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Version One Ventures, with participation from All In Capital, Unisol, and iSeed. AI researcher Soumith Chintala and founders from Foundry Robotics, Coformer.ai, Better Capital, and others participated as angel investors.Mowito was founded in 2024 by Puru Rastogi, Adityanag Nagesh, and Safar V. It builds AI foundational models for industrial robotic arms, addressing the bottleneck of software programming in manufacturing automation by allowing robots to learn tasks through human demonstration rather than explicit programming—engineers do not need to rewrite control code when product lines change. Mowito's software can run on standard, unmodified industrial robots, serving automotive and electronics manufacturing clients. This round of financing will be used for expansion into the U.S. market, expanding engineering and marketing teams, and deepening deployment in manufacturing sites.

According to a report by China News Service, the International Data Corporation (IDC) released a global commercial service robot tracking report on July 7. The data shows that by 2025, the global commercial service robot market size will reach $1.37 billion, a year-on-year growth of 35.7%, with an annual shipment volume of approximately 155,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 44.1%. Among them, Chinese manufacturers, leveraging supply chain and AI technology innovation advantages, continue to lead the global market, accounting for over 90% of the total share among the top ten manufacturers in global shipments.In terms of subcategories, commercial cleaning robots are growing the fastest, with an estimated shipment volume of about 58,000 units (+83.8%) in 2025, and a market size exceeding $760 million; delivery robots remain the largest submarket in terms of shipment volume, with annual shipments of about 84,000 units (+30.2%). In terms of regional distribution, the Chinese market continues to hold the global lead with approximately 38% market share, while the Latin American region has become the fastest-growing regional market with a year-on-year shipment growth rate of 84.4%. IDC predicts that by 2030, global commercial service robot shipments will reach 454,000 units, with the market size expected to grow to $3.17 billion.

On July 1, according to WEEX TradFi data, the recent performance of the US stock technology sector has been mixed, with funds continuously focusing on Physical AI, robotics, and related supply chain directions that have actual implementation expectations. Among them, AMD rose about 7.7% in 24 hours, Symbotic (SYM) rose over 6.6%, Texas Instruments (TXN) rose about 4.4%, NVIDIA (NVDA) rose about 2.6%, Tesla (TSLA) rose about 2.1%, and Analog Devices (ADI) rose about 1.4%.WEEX Labs believes that market funds are shifting from a single computing power narrative to core links in the Physical AI supply chain with implementation expectations, including Tesla's Optimus production line transformation and NVIDIA's Physical AI Day, which continuously strengthen expectations for hardware and software collaboration, leading to increased attention in related sectors.

Meta is developing a highly personalized AI assistant to help users manage daily tasks. According to insiders, the project includes an advanced digital assistant powered by Meta's newly launched Muse Spark AI model, which is currently being tested among internal employees.Additionally, reports indicate that Meta aims to create a product similar to OpenClaw, allowing users to create AI robots known as "agents" that can autonomously perform tasks.

Polkadot data shows that robots have generated 51% of the total network traffic, officially surpassing the proportion of human activity for the first time.

Cathie Wood recently expressed strong opposition to the current high level of transparency from the Federal Reserve during her appearance on the podcast "The Brainstorm," stating, "This has instead created market volatility and high-frequency trading opportunities." She prefers a more action-oriented approach similar to the eras of Volcker (focused on money supply) or Greenspan (where gold prices were relatively stable).Cathie Wood believes that current U.S. inflation is essentially below 2% (based on unit labor costs of only 1.2-1.4%), which is completely different from the wage-cost-push inflation of the 1970s. Trump’s policies (similar to Reagan's but more aggressive) could further enhance U.S. capital returns, strengthen the dollar, and help control inflation without the need for significant interest rate hikes.In the field of AI, Cathie Wood stated that if hundreds of billions of dollars are invested in AI computing power over the next few years, humanoid robots are expected to achieve true flexibility by the late 2020s, potentially replacing human labor. Cathie analyzes that the economics of humanoid robots are very strong: a $100,000 robot could correspond to a human cost of $500,000 over 10 years, with an ROI of over 5 times, ultimately leading to trillion-dollar productivity gains.

DeFi analyst @lordjorx posted on the X platform stating that the 40% increase in CVX price is not a trend reversal, but rather driven by continuous buying from two specific wallet addresses' bots.On-chain data shows that these two addresses engage in hundreds of interactions daily. During the price increase, two addresses among the top 100 CVX holders reduced their total holdings by 25% and 34% respectively, taking advantage of this artificial pump. Currently, the bot addresses that triggered the increase have either emptied their wallets or transferred their funds.

Alliance DAO co-founder QwQiao stated on social media that no technological revolution in the past few hundred years—whether it be the steam engine, electricity, or computers—has changed the long-term per capita GDP growth rate of 2%. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will escape debt through artificial intelligence and robotics. The printing press must continue to run.

ChainCatcher news, ETH has fallen more than 8% in the past seven days and is currently down nearly 55% from its high of $4000 in December 2024. However, a recent video circulating on social media of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin "meowing" at a robot seems to have sparked dissatisfaction within the crypto community. Several industry insiders have criticized Vitalik Buterin, such as:Cork Protocol co-founder Phil Fogel posted on the X platform, "My professional salary and net worth are largely in the hands of this meowing person." Crypto KOL Wendy O also stated, "The future of Ethereum is in the hands of this meowing person." Crypto trader Scott Crypto Warrior expressed more intense criticism, saying, "Pray for ETH, Vitalik what are you doing? Stop finding rims for robots and give ETH a boost."