Alphabet-owned robotics software company Intrinsic joins Google

TechCrunch · Feb 25, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Google is moving further into physical AI by bringing a familiar robotics software platform under its wing. Alphabet-owned Intrinsic, which builds AI models and software designed to make industrial robots more accessible, is joining Google, the companies announced on Wednesday. Intrinsic will remain a distinct entity within Google but will work closely with Google DeepMind and will tap into Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud services. Alphabet declined to share information regarding funding or purchase price. Intrinsic “graduated” into an independent Alphabet-owned company in 2021 after five years of development within Alphabet’s X, the company’s moonshot research division. Other companies that have graduated from X include robotaxi company Waymo and drone delivery company Wing. Wendy Tan White has served as Intrinsic’s CEO since its spinout in 2021. The company hit the ground running. A few months after announcing its independence, Intrinsic acquired Vicarious, a fellow robotics software company, in April 2022. While the purchase price wasn’t disclosed, Vicarious had raised about $250 million from VCs and tech bigwigs like Jeff Bezos. A few months later, Intrinsic acquired several for-profit divisions of Open Robotics, a nonprofit organization that builds hardware and software platforms for the robotics industry. Techcrunch event Boston, MA | June 9, 2026 Despite this rapid expansion, Intrinsic laid off 20% of its workforce in January 2023. The company announced its first product, Flowstate, just a few months later. Flowstate is a software platform for developing robotics workflows aimed at developers that don’t have deep robotics experience — aligning with the company’s mission to make robotics more accessible. Since then, the company has fine-tuned the technology, improved its simulation capabilities, and released its Intrinsic Vision AI model in late 2025. Intrinsic announced a joint venture with electronics manufacturer Foxconn in October 2025 that entails the two companies working together on general-purpose intelligent robots to transform how electronics are manufactured, with the goal of full factory automation. Now, the company is working toward those goals with closer collaboration with Google’s AI prowess. “Combined with Google’s incredible AI and infrastructure, we’re going to unlock the promise of physical AI for a much broader set of manufacturing businesses and developers. This will fundamentally shift production, from its economics to operations, and enable truly advanced manufacturing,” Tan White wrote in the company’s blog post. This move makes a lot of sense for Google, as many tech leaders, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, see physical AI as the next natural step in the monetization and advancement of AI models and technology. Becca is a senior writer at TechCrunch that covers venture capital trends and startups. She previously covered the same beat for Forbes and the Venture Capital Journal. You can contact or verify outreach from Becca by emailing rebecca.szkutak@techcrunch.com. View Bio