Google Folds Robotics Unit into Main Company
Google is moving its robotics project, Intrinsic, into the main company to serve as the 'Android for robots' — a standardized software platform for physical AI. The move signals a major strategic push to build an open, extensible ecosystem for robotics, mirroring Android's success in smartphones and bringing the project closer to Google DeepMind.
Intrinsic originated as a project within X, Alphabet's "moonshot factory," where it was developed for five and a half years before officially graduating to become an independent Alphabet company in July 2021. The company is led by CEO Wendy Tan White, a British tech entrepreneur who previously co-founded the SaaS website builder Moonfruit and was a vice president at X. Under Tan White's leadership, Intrinsic has expanded by acquiring companies like the Jeff Bezos-funded Vicarious and the commercial division of Open Robotics. In 2023, the company launched its core product, Flowstate, a web-based development platform with ready-to-use skills designed to simplify the programming of industrial robots. The integration with Google is set to deepen Intrinsic's collaboration with Google DeepMind, giving the robotics platform access to the Gemini family of AI models and Google Cloud infrastructure. This follows Google DeepMind's own recent advancements in robotics AI, including the RT-2 model, a vision-language-action model that allows robots to reason about and manipulate objects they haven't seen before. This software-centric approach marks a shift from Google's earlier robotics strategy, which involved acquiring and later selling hardware-focused companies like Boston Dynamics. The focus is now on creating a common software layer, IntrinsicOS, that can run on hardware from various manufacturers, much like Android does for smartphones. Intrinsic has already forged significant industry partnerships, including a joint venture with Foxconn to co-develop intelligent robots for electronics manufacturing. The company has also collaborated with Siemens and NVIDIA, integrating its platform with their simulation and AI technologies. The move positions Google in the growing field of "physical AI," where AI models control physical hardware. This space includes competitors developing general-purpose humanoid robots, such as Figure AI (backed by OpenAI and Nvidia) and Agility Robotics (partnered with Amazon), which also depend on sophisticated AI to perform tasks.
