🍦 SoftBank Just Bought $5.4B of Robots Like It's a Costco Run
A completely normal purchase in a week where companies raised billions, launched humanoids, upgraded grippers, and casually talked about space-based data centers.
FOMA AI News
October 11, 2025
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Reflection AI $2B Raise: Raised $2 billion at $8 billion valuation, led by Nvidia, to develop open-source frontier AI models
SoftBank $5.4B Robotics Acquisition: Acquired ABB’s robotics division for $5.4 billion, adding a segment growing at 20% annually
OpenAI Developer Day: Unveiled Apps in ChatGPT, AgentKit, GPT-5 Pro, Sora 2 video model, and enhanced API features
💰 Market Moves
[FUNDING] Reflection AI raised $2 billion at $8 billion valuation, led by Nvidia, to develop open-source frontier AI models
[ACQUISITION] SoftBank acquired ABB’s robotics division for $5.4 billion, adding a segment growing at 20% annually
[FUNDING] EvenUp raised $150 million Series E at $2 billion valuation for its AI legal platform
[FUNDING] Invisible Technologies raised $100 million at $2 billion+ valuation to scale its AI training platform
[FUNDING] Havoc AI raised $85 million for maritime autonomous systems
[FUNDING] Kernel raised $22 million Series A for its agentic software development platform
[FORECAST] Dell raised AI growth forecasts through 2030, doubling projected sales on enterprise infrastructure demand
[FUNDING] FurtherAI raised $25 million Series A from a16z for insurance AI
[FUNDING] Feedzai raised $75 million at $2 billion+ valuation for its AI-powered financial crime platform
[FUNDING] Phaidra secured over $50 million Series B to build AI agents for industrial optimization
[FUNDING] n8n secured $180 million Series C at $2.5 billion valuation to expand its AI orchestration platform
🛠️ Tech & Product
[LAUNCH] OpenAI Developer Day unveiled Apps in ChatGPT, AgentKit, GPT-5 Pro, Sora 2 video model, and enhanced API features
[UPDATE] Microsoft rolled out updated Copilot app for Windows Insiders, creating Office files and connecting to email/calendar
[LAUNCH] Intel launched Robotics AI Suite software and Panther Lake chip for humanoid robot development
[UNVEIL] Deep Robotics unveiled DR02, the first IP66-rated all-weather humanoid robot
[UPGRADE] Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot upgraded with three-fingered gripper and Toyota’s Large Behavior Model integration
[LAUNCH] Zendesk introduced autonomous voice agents claiming 80% resolution of support issues, plus video support and advanced analytics
[RELEASE] IBM released Granite 4.0, hybrid enterprise AI models optimized for efficiency on less powerful hardware
[RELEASE] Alibaba released Qwen3 family including 1-trillion-parameter Max, multimodal VL, and audio-visual Omni models
[LAUNCH] Google launched Gemini 2.5 Computer Use model, outperforming competitors on web and mobile navigation tasks
[UNVEIL] Figure AI unveiled Figure 03 humanoid robot with near-human dexterity, capable of folding laundry and sorting parts
[RELEASE] Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.5 with state-of-the-art coding benchmarks and enhanced agentic capabilities
[RELEASE] Google DeepMind released CodeMender, an AI agent that automatically identifies and fixes software vulnerabilities
[LAUNCH] Google launched Gemini Enterprise, a unified AI platform enabling businesses to deploy agents and automate tasks without coding
🗣️ Industry Chatter
[METRIC] Sam Altman stated ChatGPT has surpassed 800 million weekly active users, with the API processing over 6 billion tokens per minute
[PLAN] Meta plans to invest $600 billion in AI infrastructure through 2028, signaling massive commitment to AI development
[PREDICTION] Jeff Bezos predicts space-based data centers within 10–20 years, potentially outperforming Earth facilities due to falling launch costs
[UPDATE] BMW operated figure robots on its production line for five months, running 10-hour days
[PROJECT] Minecraft gamer built a 5-million-parameter ChatGPT model in Minecraft using 439 million Redstone blocks
[CRITICISM] Zelda Williams criticized AI deepfakes of her father Robin Williams, calling them disgusting
[MOVEMENT] Former UK PM Rishi Sunak joined Microsoft and Anthropic as a senior advisor on AI policy
[RESEARCH] Anthropic research shows 250 poisoned documents can create LLM backdoors, regardless of model size
[REPORT] Senate report predicts nearly 100 million U.S. jobs could be eliminated by AI within the next decade
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