Meta has acquired Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI), a startup developing AI for robots targeting high-value labor markets. The deal brings ARI's expertise in robot control and self-learning to Meta's push into humanoid machines. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Meta announced the purchase of Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI) to bolster its in-house efforts in robot hardware and AI. A Meta spokesperson told Bloomberg that ARI will provide deep expertise in designing models for frontier capabilities in robot control and whole-body humanoid control, addressing critical challenges in high-value labor markets. The acquisition supports Meta's broader ambitions in humanoid robotics, where the company is already building its own technology. ARI co-founder Xiaolong Wang posted on X that the team always aimed to train a truly general-purpose physical agent, which they now believe will be humanoid. He added that scaling will come from learning directly from human experience, and Meta has the key components to realize this vision. Wang, co-founders Xuxin Cheng and Lerrel Pinto, along with the ARI team, will join Meta's Superintelligence Labs. Pinto previously co-founded Fauna Robotics, which he left last year before Amazon acquired it for its humanoid robot project. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth stated in 2025 that software is the bottleneck in robotics, with plans to develop licensable software starting with dexterous hands, akin to Google's Android model. Other players include Amazon and Tesla, which earlier this year shifted Fremont factory space from Model S and X production to Optimus humanoid robots.
