Meta Acquires ARI to Build the Intelligence Layer for Humanoid Robots

The Platform Play for a $5 Trillion Market

Meta acquired humanoid robotics AI startup Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI) on May 1, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed. Co-founders Xiaolong Wang (Carnegie Mellon) and Lerrel Pinto (UC Berkeley) and the full team will join Meta's Superintelligence Labs research division.

ARI was building foundation models for robots to understand, predict, and adapt to human behaviors in complex, dynamic environments. The team brings expertise in whole-body humanoid control and self-supervised learning.

An Android Strategy for Robots

Meta aims to own the intelligence layer for humanoid robots while letting hardware manufacturers build the machines — the same way Google captured the smartphone ecosystem with Android. Figure AI's Figure 03 is running 24/7 fully autonomous shifts at BMW's Spartanburg plant. Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoid units in 2025. The race to own the software stack is on.

Meta's Broader Physical AI Pivot

Meta disclosed $145 billion in planned 2026 AI infrastructure spend on the same Q1 earnings call. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that the path to AGI runs through robots that learn through direct physical interaction with the world — not just data centers.

Source: TechCrunch, Bloomberg