Google DeepMind gives humanoid robots full body control

Gemini Robotics 2 lets an Apptronik humanoid walk, bend, and clean up a room on its own.

Google DeepMind unveiled Gemini Robotics 2 this week, a set of AI models that finally let humanoid robots move their whole bodies instead of just their arms. Demonstrated on Apptronik's Apollo 2, the system can walk across a room, crouch, and place an object exactly where it is told to, reasoning through each step in real time. Earlier versions only handled tabletop tasks with the upper body. The new model also controls a five fingered hand well enough to tie knots and seal bags, and it can adapt to a completely new robot body in just a few hours using fewer than 200 examples. Google admits the robots are still slow and inconsistent, with pickup success rates ranging widely by task.

Amazon posts record quarter as AWS growth hits four year high

Revenue crossed $200 billion for the first time as cloud demand for AI outpaced every forecast.

Amazon posted total revenue of $200.6 billion for the second quarter, up 20 percent year over year, and analysts were caught off guard by AWS. The cloud unit grew 37 percent to $42.2 billion, its fastest pace in 18 quarters, blowing past the 31 percent growth Wall Street expected. CEO Andy Jassy said AWS is booming, with its AI and chips businesses each now running above $25 billion a year. Operating income jumped 43 percent to $27.5 billion. Amazon also raised its 2026 capital spending plan to about $220 billion, citing rising memory costs and continued AI infrastructure buildout. The company says it will not have enough server capacity to meet demand through 2027.

The memory chip shortage is about to get even worse for buyers

SK Hynix now says the RAM crunch driving up laptop and phone prices could last past 2030.

The global memory shortage keeps getting worse, and this month SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh Jung told Bloomberg the crunch will likely persist beyond 2030. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have all shifted production toward the high bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators, since it earns three to five times the margin of ordinary consumer DRAM. That has starved the supply of standard chips going into laptops, phones, and game consoles. TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to climb another 13 to 18 percent this quarter, and PC makers including Lenovo, Dell, and HP have already warned of price hikes as high as 30 percent this year. New fab capacity from the major producers is not expected to ease the squeeze until 2027 at the earliest.

Unitree confirms its Shanghai IPO will launch next week

China's top humanoid robot maker is set to become a public market bellwether for the sector.

Unitree Robotics announced late Thursday that it will launch its initial public offering in Shanghai next week, moving forward on a listing that has been in the works since March. The Hangzhou based company plans to sell about 40.45 million shares, roughly 10 percent of its enlarged share capital, aiming to raise around 4.2 billion yuan, or about 619 million dollars. Unitree is one of the few humanoid robotics makers that is actually profitable, which sets it apart from most companies chasing STAR Market listings. Its debut follows the recent listing of memory maker ChangXin Memory Technologies, whose valuation briefly topped 4 trillion yuan.

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