Samwise Tech/AI/Robotics Newsletter
Thursday, May 14, 2026
Humanoid and Schaeffler Sign Deal to Deploy Thousands of Robots in Factories
Humanoid, a UK-based robotics startup founded in 2024 by Artem Sokolov, signed a binding, phased deployment agreement with Schaeffler, the German motion-technology company, to integrate wheeled humanoid robots into live manufacturing operations. The deal targets a four-digit number of units across Schaeffler’s global facilities by 2032, with the first systems going live at two sites in Germany between December 2026 and June 2027. Schaeffler will supply actuators for Humanoid’s systems, which will be offered under a robotics-as-a-service model. The agreement ranks among the largest disclosed humanoid robot rollouts ever announced, putting Humanoid among the youngest companies to land a contract of this scale.
Sources: Robotics & Automation News
Anduril Raises $5 Billion, Doubling Valuation to $61 Billion in AI Defense Surge
Anduril, the AI-powered defense technology company co-founded by Palmer Luckey, raised $5 billion in a Series H round led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, more than doubling its valuation to $61 billion in under a year. The company doubled its revenue in 2025 to $2.2 billion and has now raised more than $11 billion total from investors. Anduril builds AI-enabled autonomous systems spanning drones, surveillance, command software, and battlefield autonomy. The round, announced Tuesday, pushes Anduril past traditional defense contractors in market valuation and reflects a broader investor surge into military AI amid continued global security spending growth.
Sources: TechCrunch
Ransomware Group Nitrogen Claims Foxconn Breach, Says 11 Million Files Stolen
The ransomware group Nitrogen claimed responsibility for breaching Foxconn, the electronics manufacturer that builds devices for Apple, Google, Nvidia, Dell, and Intel, and said it exfiltrated over 11 million files containing confidential customer information. Foxconn confirmed on Tuesday that a cyberattack disrupted operations at its North American factories but said production was resuming at affected sites. Nitrogen is a double-extortion group that encrypts victims’ files while also stealing them to use as leverage. The company has not confirmed which customers’ data was exposed or whether any ransom demand has been made.
Sources: TechCrunch
Anthropic Launches Claude for Small Business with 10-City Nationwide Tour
Anthropic launched Claude for Small Business on Tuesday, a suite of AI services targeting independent businesses far removed from enterprise clients like Walmart and Starbucks. The new offering integrates Claude with widely used small-business software, including QuickBooks, Canva, Docusign, HubSpot, and PayPal. To drive adoption, Anthropic is planning a coast-to-coast promotional tour beginning in Chicago that will visit 10 cities, offering free AI training workshops to 100 local business owners at each stop. Small businesses represent 44 percent of U.S. GDP and employ nearly half the private-sector workforce, but their AI adoption has lagged larger companies by a wide margin.
Sources: TechCrunch
Adaption Launches AutoScientist to Automate AI Model Fine-Tuning
Adaption, an AI data startup, launched AutoScientist on Wednesday, a tool that automates the process of fine-tuning AI models without requiring manual human intervention at each step. Unlike standard fine-tuning approaches, AutoScientist co-optimizes both the training data and the model simultaneously, running the full research loop end-to-end and consistently improving on base model performance across dataset sizes ranging from 5,000 to 100,000 examples. The company says developers can go from concept to an adapted, owned model in an afternoon rather than weeks. AutoScientist builds on Adaption’s existing Adaptive Data product and is free to use for 30 days after launch.
Sources: TechCrunch
Notion Opens Developer Platform to Connect AI Agents Across Enterprise Tools
Notion launched a developer platform on Wednesday that transforms the productivity app into an orchestration layer for AI agents, letting teams build multistep automated workflows that draw from any connected database. The platform extends Notion’s Custom Agents feature, which launched in February and has already seen over one million agents created. New capabilities include syncing external data from services like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Postgres directly into Notion databases, plus connectivity with agents built outside Notion. The move positions the company as a coordination hub for both human and AI workers, competing with enterprise workflow platforms from Salesforce and Microsoft.
Sources: TechCrunch
WhatsApp Adds Incognito Mode for Meta AI Conversations
Meta is adding an incognito mode for conversations with its Meta AI chatbot in WhatsApp, giving users a privacy option for sensitive queries. Incognito chats are processed in a secure environment, disappear automatically when users close the chat window, and end if the app is closed or the phone locked. Meta AI retains no context from incognito sessions, and the conversations cannot be accessed by Meta or other parties. The feature will also appear on the standalone Meta AI app and rolls out gradually over the coming months, activated by tapping a new icon in the Meta AI chat.
Sources: TechCrunch
Tech Pulse
Top Frontier Models (SWE-Bench Verified): Claude Sonnet 5 / Anthropic (92.4%) | Grok 4 / xAI (75.0%) | GPT-5.4 / OpenAI (74.9%)
Top Open Source Models (SWE-Bench Verified): MiniMax M2.5 (80.2%) | Kimi K2 Thinking / Moonshot (leading SWE-Pro) | DeepSeek V4 (strong across benchmarks)
Top Small Models (15–50B): Qwen3-32B / Alibaba | Gemma 3-27B / Google | Mistral Medium 3.5
Top Edge Models (0–15B): Gemma 3n-E2B / Google (2B effective, multimodal) | SmolLM3-3B / HuggingFace | Phi-4-mini / Microsoft
AI Leaders: NVIDIA $5.2T | Alphabet $4.8T | Microsoft $3.2T
Robotics Leaders: Intuitive Surgical $175B | ABB $165B | Fanuc ~$28B (est.)
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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