Anthropic aims to fill the gap in robotics and has reportedly approached Physical Intelligence for acquisition.

According to Techmeme's Beating Report, tech blogger Robert Scoble has claimed that Anthropic is acquiring the robot AI startup Physical Intelligence. The news spread quickly, but the deal has not been finalized yet. Physical Intelligence CEO Karol Hausman has denied it internally.

The rumor is not unfounded. The two parties did discuss an acquisition earlier this spring. Physical Intelligence is developing a universal robot base model aiming to have the same "brain" control different robots and tasks. Co-founder Sergey Levine described it as a "robot version of ChatGPT."

Physical Intelligence has raised over $1 billion and is in talks for another $1 billion in new funding, valuing the company at over $11 billion. The latest model, dubbed π0.7, can handle tasks without specific training under language guidance but cannot yet independently perform complex multi-step operations with just one command.

Anthropic has previously experimented with robot dog control using Claude, but the public actions have mostly been research tests. Acquiring Physical Intelligence would directly provide a robot control model, training data, and hardware expertise.