Meta News
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Here to discuss everything Meta Platforms related……
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Picked up the following-essentially, Llama foundational LLM progress is allowing these spin off projects. This is why companies invest in LLMs. A smarter machine can now train other machines!
Meta is investing heavily in humanoid robots and is forming a new team within the Reality Labs division to develop it, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The new Reality Labs subdivision will be led by Marc Whitten, former CEO of GM's autonomous vehicle unit Cruise. Sources told Bloomberg that Whitten will be tasked with hiring around 100 engineers this year for the project.
Meta plans to work on the robot hardware, which will focus on household chores for now. Eventually, it hopes to make the underlying AI, sensors, and software for robots that will be made and sold by a range of companies, sources told Bloomberg.
The company is discussing plans with robotics companies, including Unitree Robotics and Figure AI Inc (an Nvidia investee) .Meta plans to compete with Tesla's Optimus robot.
“The core technologies we’ve already invested in and built across Reality Labs and AI are complementary to developing the advancements needed for robotics,” CTO Andrew Bosworth reportedly said.
“We believe that expanding our portfolio to invest in this field will only accrue value to Meta AI and our mixed and augmented reality programs,”
The software, sensors, and computing packages that are already being developed for the company's devices are the same technologies that are needed to power humanoids, and Meta will build some of its own hardware, use off-the-shelf components, and work with existing manufacturers as soon as it can, said the people with knowledge of the project. -
It's interesting that Meta is working with Figure AI, a company which Nvidia along with MSFT and Amazons's Bezos invested in last year. Again Nvidia is providing the chips to train the models and the robot-brain, Jetson Thor (JT), the most powerful platform for AI vision and autonomy every created. Pre trained with Isaac-sim(simulation) on a wide number of tasks, the machine is deployment ready-launching mid 2025. It can also support level 4 FSD in cars and trucks and has already been adopted by most car manufacturers.
Other companies developing robots are:
Boston Dynamics-parent Hyundai
Tesla Optimus bot
APL Robotics
PAL
BMW
Honda
Foxconn
MercedesJetson will be a significant new opportunity for the company in the years ahead.
The common denominator-Nvidia. It doesn't matter who makes the machines, they will win the dominant share of hardware and software solutions to make it work.