Apptronik launches robot training hub, unveils Apollo 2 humanoid robot

By Akash Sriram

June 30 (Reuters) – Google-backed Apptronik unveiled a new robot training facility on Tuesday, betting that large-scale real-world data collection will accelerate the commercialization of humanoid robots.

The Austin-based startup said the facility, developed with Google DeepMind, is designed to move robots from pilot projects to production deployments.

• The nearly 90,000-square-foot facility, Robot Park, in Austin houses fleets of humanoid robots performing logistics, manufacturing and retail tasks to generate training data for AI models.

• The company also introduced Apollo 2, its latest humanoid robot, available in both bipedal and wheeled configurations, which has operated for more than a year as the company’s data collection platform.

• Robot Park supplies data to Gemini Robotics, Google’s robotics AI model, under Apptronik’s research partnership with Google DeepMind.

• “We have a factory that produces robots, we also have a factory that produces data,” CEO Jeff Cardenas said, describing Robot Park as the engine for building production-grade AI models.

• Cardenas said Apptronik has built “hundreds” of Apollo 2 robots but declined to disclose deployment numbers.

• “We’ll continue to pilot through this year, and then we’ll start to see real production versions … in 2027 and beyond,” Cardenas said.

• Apptronik raised $520 million in a funding round announced in February that valued the company at about $5 billion.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)