Meta teamed up with Chinese robotics firm Fourier to build Max, a 5-foot, 106-pound humanoid robot designed to handle household chores. Built in just three months and powered by Nvidia’s Jetson Thor chip, the prototype gives Meta a physical testbed to train real-world AI and take on Tesla’s Optimus.
NVIDIA just unveiled the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot at GTC Taipei, an open blueprint that pairs a Unitree H2 Plus chassis and Sharpa tactile hands with its new Jetson Thor AI computer. It covers the full stack from simulation to real-world deployment, aiming to save researchers from cobbling together fragmented hardware and software. Stanford, ETH Zurich, and Ai2 are already on board, with hardware shipping late 2026.
Nvidia just made its Jetson Thor robotics computing platform generally available. It delivers 7.5x the AI compute and double the memory of the previous Orin chip, letting physical AI agents run generative reasoning models directly on edge devices. Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics are already putting it inside Atlas and Digit, with developer kits starting at $3,499.
Boston Dynamics just expanded its partnership with NVIDIA to bring the Isaac GR00T framework and Jetson Thor compute to its electric Atlas humanoid. The setup lets Atlas run heavy multimodal models alongside its native whole-body controllers, while training complex locomotion in Isaac Lab. Why it matters: The world's most agile robot just picked up the most popular AI compute stack.
Nvidia just introduced Project GR00T, a general-purpose foundation model platform tailored for humanoid robots, alongside a dedicated Jetson Thor computer powered by the Blackwell architecture. Almost every major robotics player—from Boston Dynamics to Figure AI—is already on board, positioning the chip giant as the core brain behind embodied AI.
