Agile Robots has become the latest robotics company to partner with Google DeepMind

Agile Robots has partnered with Google DeepMind to develop robots with its AI research lab, the latest in a string of robotics companies to do so.

Munich, Germany-based Agile Robots announced it has entered into a strategic research partnership with Google DeepMind on Tuesday. The partnership involves Agile Robots implementing Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics core models into its own robots and data collected by the robots used to improve the Gemini AI core models.

The two companies will work together to test, fine-tune and deploy robots using Gemini Enterprise models in industrial use cases across sectors including electronics and automotive manufacturing, data centers and logistics.

“Agile Robots has already installed more than 20,000 robotic solutions worldwide, proving intelligent automation at scale,” Zhaopeng Chen, co-founder and CEO of Agile Robots, said in the deal press release. “The next huge opportunity lies in intelligent, autonomous production systems that can transform entire industries. Integrating Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics models into our robotic solutions puts us at the forefront of this rapidly growing market.”

A company spokesman said the deal was long-term but declined to share more details about the duration or price.

Agile Robots was founded in 2018 and has raised more than $270 million in venture capital funding from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund, Chinese hardware company Xiaomi, Midas Group, and others.

It’s just the latest robotics company to partner with Google DeepMind to develop its technology.

Earlier this year, Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics, maker of the popular dog-like robot Spot, announced that it had partnered with Google DeepMind to use the company’s AI enterprise models to help develop the upcoming humanoid robot Atlas. Boston Dynamics was previously owned by Google from 2013 to 2017.

Broadly, robo-partnerships are on the rise this year. German robotics startup Neura Robotics announced a partnership with Qualcomm in early March that sees Neura Robotics using Qualcomm’s recently announced IQ10 series of processors, designed for mobile robots and humanoids, as a reference design for future robots.

Robots are incredibly complex in terms of hardware and software, so these partnerships make a lot of sense. As companies work to develop robots that can operate autonomously, it makes sense for companies that have a specific strong set — whether hardware, ingenuity, or software, to name a few — to partner with other companies with different expertise.

With many in the industry, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, seeing physical AI as the next frontier for the AI ​​market, these partnerships will likely not only continue, but accelerate.