Meta Joins the Robot Race

Meta has just bought a startup that builds AI for robots, signaling the company’s ambition to create humanoid machines. The acquisition gives Meta a team that is already working on models enabling robots to read human actions and react in real‑time, a key step toward everyday robot helpers. This move follows Meta’s huge AI spend and hints that the firm wants to embed its algorithms into devices people use daily, from smart glasses to possible home assistants.Other tech giants are also chasing the same goal: Elon Musk says Tesla’s future hinges on humanoid robots, Amazon bought a robot maker in March, and Chinese firms are developing household bots. Yet the road to mass‑market robots is long; current home helpers like vacuum cleaners still lag behind human effort, and people worry about privacy and usefulness. The price of a life‑sized robot may stay out of reach for many decades, making the real payoff uncertain even as investors pour money into the idea.