Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has acquired a robotics startup, ramping up the race to develop humanoid robots. As humanoid development is seen as the ultimate goal of physical AI — which combines artificial intelligence with the physical world — competition among Big Tech firms is expected to intensify.
According to Bloomberg on Tuesday local time, Meta completed its acquisition of Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI) the previous day. The acquisition price was not disclosed.
ARI is a small San Diego-based startup with about 20 employees. It focuses on developing AI models designed to enable humanoids to perform repetitive tasks such as household chores. Meta described ARI as "a leader in robotic intelligence that designs systems capable of understanding, predicting, and adapting to human behavior in complex, dynamic environments."
ARI's co-founders, Xiaolong Wang and Lerrel Pinto, are both academic-turned-entrepreneurs. Wang, a former Nvidia researcher, served as an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego). Pinto, an assistant professor at New York University, co-founded humanoid developer Physical Intelligence before launching ARI, leaving the former company in 2025.
The two co-founders and their team members have joined Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), Meta's AI development organization. "When we started ARI a year ago, our goal was to achieve physical artificial general intelligence (AGI)," Wang said via social network service (SNS). "Meta's ecosystem has all the key elements needed to realize this vision."
Meta has been preparing its humanoid business since February last year, when it recruited Marc Whitten — who previously led General Motors' (GM) robotaxi division — as vice president. The company established a robotics unit under Reality Labs, its wearables development arm, and has been pursuing in-house development of humanoid hardware and the AI technology to power it. The acquisition allows Meta to integrate ARI's model design, robot control, and learning technologies. Just before that, in 2024, Meta had been conducting research on tactile-sensing robotic hands and on "training-free robots" that can move objects in untrained environments.
The battle among Big Tech firms vying for AI supremacy is expanding into humanoids. Amazon acquired Physical Intelligence in March. After its 2021 home robot "Astro" failed to make a significant impact, Amazon acquired Physical Intelligence — which had drawn attention for its bipedal robot "Sprout" — to target consumers.
Tesla and Boston Dynamics are leading factory automation with "Optimus" and "Atlas," respectively. Tesla will end production of the Model S and Model X and begin mass production of Optimus starting in the second quarter of this year. Boston Dynamics aims to deploy Atlas in the production lines of its parent company Hyundai Motor by 2028.
