This week in humanoids

Matrix put production capacity in the foreground

Matrix Robotics launched MATRIX-3 as its third-generation humanoid platform. The robot is described as a full-size system with biomimetic skin, tactile sensing, 27-degree-of-freedom dexterous hands and a proprietary physical-intelligence architecture. Public material frames MATRIX-3 for commercial services, manufacturing, logistics, medical assistance and home environments, but does not yet name pilot customers, deployment sites or a first commercial task.

The production claim is the company’s Matrix Fabrication Hall. Matrix said the MFH’s first-year production capacity is heading to 10,000 units, the facility is in Pudong, Shanghai. The company also launched an Early Access Program and RaaS ecosystem for mid-2026, with MATRIX-3 Pro pricing starting at $99,000.

Kelin moved to control Kepler

Hangzhou Kelin announced on May 19 that it plans to acquire another 41.57% of Shanghai Kepler Robotics for up to RMB 300 million, lifting its stake from 9.43% to 51%. Kepler reported RMB 4.3 million in 2025 revenue and RMB 47.2 million of orders on hand at year-end, according to Yicai. The deal would put a young humanoid company with limited revenue but a visible order book under control of an A-share listed industrial company.

Kepler’s K2 “Bumblebee” is aimed at industrial work, the robot points to intelligent manufacturing, logistics, automated inspection, research and education, with demos including automotive assembly, warehouse operations and high-altitude welding.

This welding clip is useful context; Kepler is trying to place humanoids into hazardous or awkward manual tasks where teleoperation, mobility and manipulation can keep a human operator away from the work surface.

Spirit AI added D-Robotics to its stack

Spirit AI and D-Robotics announced a strategic cooperation on May 20. The companies completed adaptation of Spirit v1.5 with D-Robotics’ Sunrise S600 embodied-compute platform and said they will work on a mass-producible software-hardware solution for humanoid robots.

The D-Robotics agreement follows Spirit’s recent sequence of funding and industrial partnerships. Spirit has been working around JD, Bosch and CATL-related environments; D-Robotics adds the robot-compute layer.

AGILINK made the hand a standalone financing story

AGILINK gave the week its clearest component story. The dexterous-hand company was spun out of AGIBOT/Zhiyuan’s hand business and has now raised four rounds since becoming a standalone company around January 2026. Its latest round brought in several hundred million yuan at a reported valuation above USD 1B. The company is led by Xiong Kun, formerly of Tencent Robotics X Lab and AGIBOT’s dexterous-hand business.

Public reports say AGILINK has delivered more than 8,000 dexterous hands and more than 10,000 grippers, with over 1,000 units deployed in industrial, logistics and service scenarios. The company’s April product update added OmniHand 3 Ultra-T, OmniHand 3 Lite and OmniPicker 3, covering high-end dexterous manipulation, ruggedized lower-cost hands and industrial gripping.

The latest funding is aimed at dexterous-hand models, open datasets, hardware iteration and larger-scale deployment. AGIBOT can use the hands internally across its own robot lines, while AGILINK can sell to outside robot OEMs, research labs and humanoid startups.

Hyundai put Atlas inside a factory plan

Boston Dynamics published a new Atlas demo around heavy-object manipulation, showing the robot lifting and carrying a mini-fridge. The task is awkward, a rigid box with weight, bulk, occlusion and shifting contact points. Atlas used reinforcement learning and simulation to train the lift across many variations before running the behavior on hardware, with the company describing the problem as a combined control and perception challenge handled through whole-body motion and proprioception.

The demo also shows why industrial humanoids are not only about hand dexterity. Some work depends on moving large, inconvenient objects through spaces built for human bodies. Atlas is built around that kind of full-body coordination: legs, torso, arms, balance and grip working together rather than a hand solving the task alone.

Hyundai’s broader Atlas plan gives the demo commercial context, but the plan itself is not new. Reuters reported in January that Hyundai planned to begin Atlas deployments at its Georgia plant in 2028 and target 30,000 units of annual production. It was reported this week from Hyundai IR materials that the group is now describing a wider 25,000-robot internal deployment plan and more than 300,000 actuator units of annual U.S. production capacity.

One design detail is worth separating from the demo itself: Atlas is being built around actuator standardization. Boston Dynamics’ latest Atlas material says the development version standardizes its actuators into two types, with arms and legs sharing structural commonality to improve replacement and maintenance efficiency. Fewer actuator variants can simplify manufacturing, spare parts, servicing and fleet support if Hyundai moves Atlas into production volumes

ORBIT was the oddball

ORBIT Robotics is the oddball item in the roundup. The Zurich-based team describes itself as an ETH Focus Project made up of 10 bachelor students building a humanoid robot for low- and zero-gravity deployment. Its robot, HELIOS, is built around a different body plan from the usual humanoid: four arms, four hands and no legs. ORBIT says the full robot will be presented at the ETH Fokus-Rollout on May 27.

The design is aimed at space operations, they describe HELIOS as a “space humanoid” for low- or zero-gravity environments, where extra arms can help with reach, bracing, tool use and manipulation without needing a walking lower body. The public material so far is teaser content ahead of the reveal, not deployment data, funding news or customer evidence.

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