Shift cleaners filmed my apartment to train robots.
Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider
I invited two cleaners and a chef from the startup Shift into my New York apartment.
The workers cooked and cleaned for free — but recorded the process to train AI and robotics.
Initially, I was nervous. I soon got used to the wires hanging from beneath their baseball caps.
I let an AI startup film every inch of my apartment.
That's a privacy nightmare — and yes, I did suitably hide all my personal items before they arrived. But, as a 23-year-old living in New York on a journalist's budget, I'm not exactly splurging on house cleaners.
These were free, so long as I agreed to the cameras.
The cleaners came from Shift, a startup that offers free housekeeping across New York. The price is the video recording, which will later be used to train robots. (Shift says it anonymizes "names, faces, or other personal information," per its website.) It's part of a bigger trend: startups are paying for videos of household tasks, like folding laundry, to train robots.
When Shift premiered in May, I quickly booked myself a spot. When the cleaners arrived two weeks later, I was nervous. Who were these strangers in my shoebox apartment? I grew even more nervous when they texted me 10 minutes before my appointment time that another staffer — a chef! — would be joining.
Eventually, though, I relaxed. It was free, after all.
The Shift cleaners had cameras on their baseball caps, with a wire hanging down.
Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider
The cleaners came first
When Shift's cleaners arrived at my apartment, I was hesitant. These were 20-somethings, wearing baggy white polos and suiting up with baseball caps attached to cameras.
The cameras hung off the brim of their caps. While they weren't walking around with large camcorders, the wires hanging off the cameras were still highly visible.
The cleaners mostly used a mix of their supplies and mine. They took about 90 minutes of the two-hour slot. I was working while they cleaned, and they rarely disrupted me, which I appreciated.
The Shift cleaners vacuumed all over my apartment.
Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider
I wasn't overly impressed with the cleaning. (When my roommate came home, he asked: Did they even come?) Still, the service was free, and I liked not having to vacuum myself.
Shift surprised me with a three-course meal
About 10 minutes after the cleaners arrived, I heard a knock on the door. Chef James was here.
James wore the same uniform: white polo, baseball cap, wire running up the neck. He set up in my kitchen and asked if I had any allergies or dietary preferences.
Chef James brought his own ingredients but used my kitchen supplies.
Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider
I had no idea what James had come to cook. (I didn't even know Shift had a chef service!) It turned out that my work lunch would be a three-course meal. James brought the ingredients himself and only used my pans, knives, and plates.
My favorite was the entrée: seared tuna with coriander salt, Meyer lemon, artichokes, sugar snap peas, and asparagus. My least favorite was the appetizer, a cured salmon belly that was vastly overpowered by mustard oil. I saved the dessert, a light cake with whipped cream and strawberries, for later.
The chef service was Shift's peak. I don't have anything sensitive in my kitchen, so I didn't have to worry about him filming, say, a passport. And who doesn't love free food?
Chef James' entrée was my favorite.
Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider
My final takeaways
About thirty minutes into the cleaning, I got used to the wires and baseball caps milling around my apartment.
I'll be interested to see whether these free robot-training services are sustainable. The costs of my session were likely high for Shift: three workers, cleaning supplies, and food. I'm hesitant to believe that a video of my apartment is worth that much.
The demand is certainly there: Shift filled its slots quickly and was similarly booked up when I checked a week later. I get why.
After they left, I enjoyed my semi-clean apartment and my leftovers. And I prayed that I didn't have any IDs or credit cards lying around that would get accidentally ingested by the AI machines as they tried to learn how to cook and clean like humans.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Hotels, airlines, and travel companies have been promoting celebrations for America's 250th birthday.
Several cities have seen a surge of interest for July Fourth this year, Priceline data shows.
From beach towns to places with ties to America's founding, here are five trending destinations.
If you're looking for the best place for a big birthday bash this summer, look no further.
America's birthday, that is.
As the United States celebrates two and a half centuries of existence, "America250" celebrations are planned throughout the country, from the lawn of the White House to historic old hotels on Route 66.
Hotels, airlines, and other travel groups have been pushing America250 — the bipartisan initiative created by Congress a decade ago to commemorate the occasion — in their marketing strategies this year, and for some destinations, it looks like it's paying off.
"The interest around America250 appears to be translating into real travel planning," Christina Bennett, a consumer travel trends expert at Priceline, told Business Insider in an email. She said there's been a surge in cities connected to America's founding story, with flight searches to cities like Boston and Philadelphia increasing 22% and 16% year-over-year, respectively.
Some destinations are feeling the tourism boost more than others, according to hotel search data from Priceline. Five destinations in particular have seen a notable surge in interest for the July Fourth holiday this year.
Priceline compared domestic hotel searches for the week of July 1 to July 5 from 2025 to 2026 and found the biggest year-over-year increases in these five cities, listed below from least to most trending.
Clearwater Beach, FloridaClearwater Beach on the Gulf of Mexico
John Coletti/Getty Images
Searches for hotels in Clearwater Beach, Florida, were up 20% year-over-year, Priceline data showed.
Located west of Tampa on the Gulf of Mexico, Clearwater Beach attracts visitors for its white sand beaches and calm, warm waters.
The city of Clearwater's "Clearwater Celebrates America" event is being expanded into a two-day festival over July 3 and 4 to commemorate America's 250th birthday.
New OrleansNew Orleans is hosting a special river fireworks show for America250.
ianmcdonnell/Getty Images
Searches for New Orleans hotels for the first five days of July were up 28% compared to last year, according to Priceline.
The city already draws Fourth of July visitors annually with its riverfront fireworks and the ESSENCE Festival of Culture, which runs July 3 to 5 this year.
For America250, the city is promoting a fireworks show called "Go 4th on the River," and several museums are hosting special events.
NashvilleNashville
Jason Kempin/Getty Images
Nashville, Tennessee, saw a 30% surge in hotel searches for the Fourth of July week, Priceline said.
Nashville's annual "Let Freedom Sing! Music City July 4th" is being expanded for America's 250th into a two-day downtown event on July 3 and 4, with live music, five stages, and what's been promoted as "the largest fireworks and drone show in the city's history."
The July 4th line-up includes The All-American Rejects, Boyz II Men, Nick Jonas, and Sublime.
Virginia Beach, VirginiaVirginia Beach
Kyle Little/Getty Images
Hotel searches for Virginia Beach, Virginia, were up 68% year-over-year, according to Priceline data.
Virginia Beach, a major July 4 tourism destination in a regular year, is hosting its annual Stars & Stripes Celebration with free concerts, fireworks, and additional events for America250.
The state of Virginia, one of the original 13 colonies and the site of the first English settlement in North America, has its own VA250 events and programming lined up to celebrate its role in the American Revolution.
Washington, DCAmerica 250 UFC
Alex Brandon/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images
America's capital was the most-searched destination overall for celebrating America's birthday, with hotel searches for the July Fourth week increasing by a whopping 79% compared to last year.
America250 celebrations are well underway in DC. The White House hosted a $60 million fight night on its front lawn on Sunday, dubbed "UFC Freedom 250," to commemorate the anniversary on what was also President Donald Trump's 80th birthday.
The line-up for the July Fourth week includes more massive celebrations. Freedom 250, the Trump-aligned group created after an executive order established a White House task force for the event, has promised a "historic patriotic display" on the National Mall.
The event, headlined by Trump, plans to tell the story of 250 years of American history with special guest speakers and will feature military tributes, live bands and orchestras, and the "largest fireworks display in history," according to the group's website.
Doug Sevey went viral for speaking out against a proposed Google data center in Iowa.
Sevey, who owns data centers, said he's concerned about the project's potential water consumption.
Resistance to data centers is playing out across the US.
A proposed Google data center project in Iowa has found an unlikely opponent: another data center owner.
Doug Sevey, president and CEO of Enseva, went viral this month thanks to a clip from the kind of meeting that has inflamed communities across the US.
"Everything Google is telling you is BS," Sevey said in a video from a Palo, Iowa, city council meeting on June 1, adding, "They're going to burn through the water, and when it's done, it's done, and they don't care."
Sevey, who has built and run several data centers, told Business Insider they need to be "done right" — with systems that don't guzzle water and that maximize energy efficiency.
He's not convinced Google, which has proposed a data center project in his community of Palo, will do that.
The fight over the proposed project has been about more than water use. Google initially pursued the development in unincorporated Linn County. As the county was developing and then approved its own data center rules, Google began pursuing annexation into Palo, a move that would put the project under the city of Palo's rules instead.
Sevey has said Google has not given enough details about its plan for the facility, which, according to public records obtained by Iowa Public Radio, could draw millions of gallons of water from a nearby river. Sevey said he relies on well water at his home and worries large withdrawals could affect local groundwater.
Sevey said the potential water draw estimate suggests Google is not planning to use a system that minimizes water use. He accused Google of pursuing a cooling system that uses more water because it will be cheaper and quicker for them to build. In comparison, he said, his data center in Hiawatha, Iowa, uses a closed-loop chilled-water system rather than evaporative cooling.
Sevey said his business, which serves companies in fields such as healthcare, manufacturing, and banking, is different from Google's, but that the same broad principles — minimizing water use and maximizing efficiency — should apply.
It's unclear what cooling system Google plans to use on the Palo data center. Google declined to comment when reached by Business Insider.
The company has said it uses evaporative cooling at many of its data centers because other methods can consume more energy or have a higher carbon footprint. Google has said it evaluates local water risks and considers alternatives before choosing a cooling system.
Google also announced several water stewardship commitments earlier this month, pledging to replenish more water than it consumes at its sites by 2030, to protect at-risk watersheds with air-cooled solutions, and to report its annual water use.
Local jurisdictions pitted against each other
As fights over data center development play out around the country, the proposed Google project in Palo has pitted local jurisdictions against each other and prompted accusations that the company is trying to skirt regulation.
If the land is annexed into Palo, Linn County's data center ordinance would no longer apply. Palo is considering a proposed data center ordinance, but unlike the county's, it does not require an independent water study or water-use agreement. Instead, the project would be subject to state-level water regulations.
The city of Palo did not respond to a request for comment. Mayor Bryan Busch said during a town hall earlier this year that the suggestion that Google would build in Palo in order to avoid regulation was "insulting and offensive," Iowa Public Radio reported.
Sevey said he does not believe Google has shared enough information with the city yet regarding its plans for the data center. He also said he thinks part of the issue is that officials in small towns aren't equipped to evaluate the tradeoffs of developing data centers and can be lured by the potential millions in additional tax revenue.
"You have all these small cities being enticed, and they have absolutely no information," he said.
Sevey said that since the clip of his comments at the city council meeting spread on social media, concerned citizens in several states have invited him to help them oppose data centers in their areas.
Sevey said he doesnot want to be the face of data center opposition. If Google can address his concerns and develop its data center responsibly, he's not necessarily opposed to it.
"If you're not taking a chance and wrecking the infrastructure, then it's just growth," he said.
SpaceX closed Tuesday at about $200, well above Morningstar's fair value estimate of $63.
Shares have defied doubters and stayed strong since the company's historic IPO last week.
A Morningstar aerospace and defense analyst details two things that could get him to raise his estimate.
Leading up to SpaceX's IPO last Friday, Morningstar analysts said the company's fair value was about 50% lower than its valuation.
After its first three trading days, which saw SpaceX soar 49% to $201.68 a share, that gap has grown to nearly 70%, with Morningstar pegging SpaceX's fair value at $63 a share.
That doesn't necessarily mean Morningstar is calling for the stock to drop. On the contrary, Nicolas Owens, its aerospace and defense analyst, thinks the stock could continue its surge in the months ahead purely thanks to market economics and investor sentiment.
"The investor enthusiasm could last indefinitely, and I think if you look at the market cap of Tesla over time, it shows that there's likely to be strong demand for these shares over the course of the next year," Owens told Business Insider on Monday.
Still, at these prices, he argues investors are pricing in "moonshot" scenarios for the company's business lines.
For example, he sees SpaceX eventually gaining around 4% of the total data center compute market through launching data centers into space. In his most optimistic scenario, which investors seem to be pricing in and which he assigns only a 7% chance of occurring, the company will capture 21% of the market.
While Owens remains skeptical about SpaceX's valuation, which is now larger than Amazon's, he said there are two things he'll be watching that will drive any potential upward readjustments to his fair value estimate.
Two ways Morningstar could move SpaceX's fair value up
The first is whether having data centers in space — if it proves possible from an engineering standpoint — becomes more cost-effective for companies than simply having their data centers on the ground.
The touted benefits of putting data centers into space are that they could be powered by solar energy without paying for cooling. That would, in theory, be a huge cost relief as data center energy needs are enormous.
But the economics of such a proposition have yet to be laid out plainly.
"If it isn't financially competitive with the terrestrial data center, then there's no point," Owens said.
Second, Owens will be waiting to see if SpaceX's Starship rocket becomes rapidly reusable, allowing it to carry more Starlink satellites, and potentially data center satellites, into space. The company is hoping to launch 350 rockets a year, up from around 165 currently.
The Starship rocket, which has undergone 12 test launches so far, is bigger than SpaceX's Falcon rocket, which will give the company the capacity to launch more satellites per launch, effectively reducing their costs. So far, the rocket's boosters are reusable, but the upper part of the rocket's heat shield tiles are not yet reusable.
"The Starship being reusable is really important because they can't do hundreds and hundreds of launches to get thousands of satellites up in space without a reusable ship, and it's not just reusable at all," Owens said.
If these projects are realized, or simply the probability of them being realized rises, Owens said SpaceX's Morningstar fair value estimate could rise. That doesn't mean, however, that SpaceX shares would necessarily climb, as these upside scenarios are already baked into the firm's stock price.
"The market seems to assume that it's already a done deal," he said.
While Owen's fair value estimate for SpaceX is not a price target nor a call on where its share price will go, he has written in recent Morningstar reports that he expects better entry points for investors going forward.
Anthropic is far from the first first Silicon Valley giant to trigger US government export controls. Apple turned the prospect of a 1999 export limit on the Power Mac G4 into an ad campaign.
JOHN G. MABANGLO / AFP via Getty Images
Steve Jobs once turned the prospect of a US export restriction into a marketing moment.
In 1999, Apple's Power Mac G4 "supercomputer" exceeded the allowed computing threshold for US exports to some countries.
Apple released an ad that leaned into the US government's concern that the computers didn't fall into the wrong hands.
Sometimes, the US government's concerns that a powerful new tech product could fall into the wrong hands can be a marketing opportunity. Just look at Steve Jobs and Apple back in 1999.
In August of that year, Jobs, who was then Apple's interim-CEO, took the stage to unveil the company's new desktop "supercomputer": the Power Mac G4. Jobs called it "the most powerful personal computer ever brought to market," CBS News reported at the time.
The only issue was all that computing power technically meant that the device crossed the threshold that would trigger US export controls limiting which countries Apple could ship the computer to.
Jobs highlighted the distinction in the wake of the computer's unveiling.
"The Power Mac G4 is so fast that it is classified as a supercomputer by the US government, and we are prohibited from exporting it to over 50 nations worldwide," Jobs said the Apple Expo, CNN reported in September 1999.
The restriction Apple faced at the time stemmed from a Government Accountability Office report that called 50 countries a concern "for military or proliferation reasons," with seven others facing near-embargo restrictions on computer exports.
Jobs told the audience that the new Macs, capable of operating at up to one gigaflop, could not be exported to the nations in that report, including China, Iraq, and North Korea.
Now — as Anthropic faces US export restrictions for its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models — Jobs' computer unveiling and subsequent marketing have renewed relevance.
Behind the scenes, Apple pushed to ease the US restrictions (and was eventually successful). In public, Apple leaned into the US government's concerns in an ad campaign recently resurfaced by Tom's Hardware.
Fable isn't the first.
In 1999 the department of defense blocked exports of the PowerMac G4 for crossing the 1 gigaflop threshold.
The commercial showed tanks surrounding the Power Mac G4 as a voiceover declares that, "For the first time in history, a personal computer has been classified as a weapon by the US government."
The commercial ended with a jab at Intel-powered PCs: "Well, they're harmless," the voiceover said.
Apple's 1999 run-in with export controls was an earlier example of Washington treating cutting-edge commercial technology as a national-security concern.
Today, there's an AI-flavored twist that's landed Anthropic into very real hot water. Over the weekend, the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to restrict foreign nationals' access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, citing national security concerns related to a possible jailbreak to get around safeguards.
Anthropic disabled the AI models for all customers while it works to clear up what it described as a misunderstanding from the White House. The company has disputed the severity of the issue that was originally flagged to the White House.
Anthropic has long championed its focus on AI safety, and earlier this year said its Mythos Preview model was too powerful to release widely due to its hacking abilities, instead offering early access to selected partners to help bolster cybersecurity safeguards.
The severity of the White House's Anthropic order means it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison (pun intended) to Steve Jobs and Apple in 1999. After all, Apple was still able to launch and sell its Power Mac G4s.
But if Anthropic manages to smooth over its latest clash with the US government and re-launch its Fable 5 and Mythos models, Jobs and Apple demonstrated decades ago that having a product so powerful it raises government export concerns doesn't have to be all bad.
Investors are piling into robotics as AI moves from screens into the real world.
Robotics and physical AI startups have raised more than $23 billion this year.
BI identified 22 investors shaping the boom, from humanoids to defense tech.
For decades, software ate the world. Venture investors chased companies that could grow without factories, supply chains, or machines. Hardware was almost a dirty word.
As the software boom cools and AI moves from chatbots into the physical world, investors are piling into robotics and so-called "physical AI," a term popularized by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to describe AI systems that can act in the real world. The pitch is that if AI transformed what happens on screens, robotics could transform work in warehouses, hospitals, construction sites, homes, and battlefields.
Venture capital investment in global robotics and physical AI has grown from around $4 billion in 2019 to $26 billion in 2025, according to PitchBook data. This year, companies in the space have raised more than $23 billion.
Several forces are driving the boom. Sensors, cameras, actuators, and other components have become cheaper and more capable. AI allows robots to move beyond rigid, preprogrammed behaviors. Talent from Tesla, Waymo, Amazon, and other hardware-building companies has learned how to deploy technology in the real world. And labor shortages and geopolitical pressure to rebuild supply chains have made automation more urgent.
"Now the cool kids have arrived," said Matt Ocko, cofounder and managing partner at DCVC, a venture firm known for backing deep-tech companies. Ocko said he and fellow investor Steve Jurvetson, an early backer of SpaceX, coined the term "deep tech" decades ago to describe companies "delivering existentially necessary and valuable results in the physical world."
The rush has also brought in investors with little experience in the category. Industry veterans say "hardware tourists" are flooding robotics cap tables, drawn in by hype and underestimating how hard it is to build machines that work reliably outside a demo.
Business Insider identified 22 investors, from established names to rising stars, who are shaping the robotics boom. Their bets span humanoids, autonomous vehicles, warehouse automation, defense robotics, and the software models that could define the next generation of machines. The list is alphabetical.
Aidan Madigan-Curtis, EclipseAidan Madigan-Curtis
Eclipse
Madigan-Curtis began her Silicon Valley career at Apple, where she worked on global operations for the first Apple Watch. She later joined Samsara as an early executive and led operations as the company scaled.
When Eclipse approached her about investing, Madigan-Curtis saw an opportunity to back companies bringing technology into the physical world.
"It felt to me like there was such a gap between the digital world and the real world we all live in — the one where we drive down roads and go to the doctor," Madigan-Curtis said. "I thought, when does technology start to penetrate the real world?"
At Eclipse, Madigan-Curtis is part of a team of former operators investing in physical-world companies. She led the firm's investment in Verkada, which builds security cameras and software for businesses, and helped incubate Bedrock Robotics, a startup founded by former Waymo engineers that is automating heavy construction equipment. She also invested in Simbe Robotics, whose Tally robot scans store shelves to help retailers track inventory and pricing.
"For a long time, the hardware was the hardest part about robotics," Madigan-Curtis said. "The real frontier now is the intelligence layer and building true embodied AI."
Ajay Agarwal, Bain Capital VenturesAjay Agarwal
Bain Capital Ventures
Agarwal spotted the promise of warehouse robots long before Amazon wanted in. In 2004, he backed Kiva Systems, which pioneered warehouse automation by using fleets of mobile robots to bring products directly to human workers. Agarwal led every successive funding round, and when Amazon bought Kiva in 2012 for $775 million, BCV was the company's only institutional investor.
More recent bets include Vention, which lets manufacturers design and order custom factory equipment online; Gather AI, which uses autonomous drones to track inventory inside warehouses; and Mind Robotics, a Rivian spinout building AI-powered industrial robots.
Agarwal is perhaps the most prominent robotics investor arguing against humanoids. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, he wrote that humanoids would prove to be a "parlor trick" with few practical uses.
His portfolio reflects that thesis: Gather AI's drones fly through warehouses, and Mind Robotics is focused on automating factory tasks rather than building human-shaped machines.
"There's a reason why humans fly planes and drive in cars," Agarwal said. "Because wheels and wings are more efficient than walking."
Bilal Zuberi, Red Glass VenturesBilal Zuberi
Lumafield
Zuberi began investing in deep tech nearly two decades ago, when a small cohort of investors, including him, realized most VCs were ignoring entire industries, including energy, defense, and 3D printing.
"We realized there's a very big TAM [total addressable market] that Silicon Valley was just not addressing," Zuberi said.
After more than a decade at Lux Capital, where he backed companies including Applied Intuition, which builds software for autonomous vehicles, and Saildrone, which makes autonomous ocean drones, Zuberi struck out on his own last year. Red Glass Ventures, named after Zuberi's signature glasses, is an early-stage fund where he works closely with founders and early teams.
Zuberi's robotics investments include a foundation model startup, a robotics data training startup, and Foundry Robotics, his only public robotics investment so far. Foundry is developing robots to automate factory assembly.
At the same time, Zuberi is wary of the hype around robotics.
"My yellow flags are up. The space is overheated, overcrowded, and a bunch of noisy investments are being made. People will lose money. We are somewhere near the top of the hype curve," he said.
Brian Zhan, Striker Venture PartnersBrian Zhan
Carla D.A.
Zhan did robotics research in college but became frustrated with the field's slow pace. He shifted into database research and joined Facebook after graduating.
He returned to robotics as an investor.
"Everyone around me agrees that it's too late to start a company in coding. Robotics is going to be the next major category," Zhan said.
Zhan practices what he describes as "nerdy investing." At CRV, he invested in Dyna Robotics, which is building foundation models for robots, and Skild AI, which is developing a general-purpose "brain" meant to work across different kinds of robots and tasks. On Skild, he missed the seed round, which went to his sister, Sequoia partner Stephanie Zhan, and Lightspeed's Raviraj Jain. He later joined the Series A.
Zhan's investments reflect his belief that robotics is still in the stage where the basic building blocks are being created. Instead of every robotics company teaching its machines from scratch, he believes companies like Dyna and Skild will provide the AI models that many future robotics companies use to help their robots see, understand instructions, and decide how to move.
Jeremy Levine and Talia Goldberg, Bessemer Venture PartnersJeremy Levine and Talia Goldberg
Bessemer Venture Partners
Levine and Goldberg are helping lead Bessemer's robotics and physical AI investment strategy. The two have argued that robotics is nearing its "GPT-2.5 moment": models are getting better, but the gap between demos and real-world deployment remains wide.
The firm has backed a range of robotics companies, including Waymo, the autonomous-driving company; Mind Robotics, which is building factory robots; Foxglove, a robotics software company; Breaker, a defense robotics startup; DroneDeploy, which uses drones and cameras to map worksites; Auterion, which builds software for drones; and ANYbotics, which makes four-legged robots for industrial inspection.
As their portfolio reflects, Levine and Goldberg are especially bullish on defense robotics, predicting the category will produce the first $50 billion-plus robotics IPOs. They reject the idea that robotics is in a bubble, arguing that too little capital is flowing into the sector given the size of the opportunity.
"There will be 100,000x more robots on Earth in the next 10-20 years," Levine wrote in a recent Bessemer report.
Joanna Lichter, Emerson CollectiveJoanna Lichter
Barbara Kinney
Lichter joined Emerson Collective in 2021 and leads the firm's physical AI investments.
Her portfolio includes Field AI, a startup founded by former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers. It builds software to help robots move through challenging environments, such as construction sites, on their own.
"Field combines three things we look for: a world-class technical team, a differentiated approach to a hard problem, and early evidence that the technology is working," Lichter said.
Her other robotics bets include Physical Intelligence, which builds general-purpose AI models for robots, and Agrippa, which applies robotics to agriculture.
For decades, Lichter argues, robots were too rigid to be broadly useful. Now, she sees signs that robots are beginning to handle new environments and tasks they weren't explicitly built for, though most of that progress remains in research labs.
"The physical transformation is just getting started," Lichter said. "And the prize is vastly larger than most people realize."
Kahini Shah, Obvious VenturesKahini Shah
Todd Tankersley
Shah has been drawn to robotics since college, when she studied engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. At Obvious Ventures, Shah invests around a simple thesis: automate work that is dull, dirty, or dangerous. The firm has backed Dexterity, a warehouse robotics startup, and Pyka, which builds autonomous electric aircraft.
Shah's focus is general-purpose robotics, and she's currently interested in dexterous manipulation, the challenge of teaching robots to use their hands with human-like skill. The "hands problem," as it is often called in robotics, remains one of the field's hardest bottlenecks. That led to her investment in Eka Robotics, cofounded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind robotics researcher Tuomas Haarnoja.
"I was looking for a world-class research team that's also commercially-minded," Shah said.
Shah said Eka's early demos, which show robot grippers nimbly clasping berries without squishing them and quickly screwing in lightbulbs, suggest its approach could help robots develop more capable hands over time. That could open the door to uses beyond factories and warehouses, including restaurants and homes.
She has also written personal angel checks into Field AI and XDOF, which develops infrastructure for robotics data collection and training.
Boyle's robotics investments are rooted in Andreessen Horowitz's American Dynamism practice, which she cofounded. The strategy focuses on companies supporting the national interest across aerospace, defense, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure.
Before joining Andreessen Horowitz, Boyle was a reporter at The Washington Post and later a partner at General Catalyst, where she invested early in Anduril, the defense tech startup building autonomous systems for the military.
She joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2022. Her portfolio includes Hadrian, which automates precision manufacturing for aerospace and defense; Saronic, which builds autonomous ships for the military; and Castelion, a defense startup developing hypersonic weapons.
Kelly ChenKelly Chen
Techarena
Chen began her career on Wall Street. While running a mortgage-trading desk at Barclays, she started angel investing, including in an early satellite-constellation company. "I realized that I wanted to spend my career investing in this space," Chen said.
She later joined DCVC, where she invested in Agility Robotics, the humanoid robot maker; Fulfil, which builds automated grocery-fulfillment systems; and Recycleye, a robotics company using AI to sort waste for recycling facilities. Chen then became a founding partner at the NATO Innovation Fund, a venture fund backed by 24 NATO allies that is investing more than $1 billion in deep tech.
"My overall approach on the investing side has always been the same, which is how do we get to unit economics? What are the companies and industries where that is possible, or will soon be possible?" Chen said.
Her focus has shifted as hardware, computing power, and simulation tools have improved. She is now launching a new fund backing physical AI companies that address the economy's hardest physical bottlenecks: supply chains, labor, industrial resilience, and critical infrastructure.
Kevin Spain and Jake Saper, Emergence CapitalKevin Spain and Jake Saper
Emergence Capital
Before becoming a VC, Saper developed large solar projects in India. To get aerial images of remote sites in Rajasthan's Thar Desert, he once had to hire a hot-air balloonist to take photos.
So when he later met DroneDeploy as a young investor, the use case was obvious. The company's software lets drones map and photograph sites for industries like construction, agriculture, and real estate. Emergence backed DroneDeploy in 2015, with Kevin Spain leading the deal.
"Being a physical-world AI investor benefits a lot from having worked in the environments that you are funding," Saper said.
A decade later, Saper and Spain co-led Emergence's investment in Bedrock Robotics, a startup founded by former Waymo engineers that's automating heavy construction equipment like excavators. The problem was familiar to Saper, who had seen how hard it can be to find skilled labor on construction sites.
Spain has also backed Physical Intelligence, which is building general-purpose AI models for robots.
"We believe that there are going to be foundation models that any robotics company can pick up and attach to their hardware to facilitate any kind of physical-world task, and Physical Intelligence is building that model," Spain said.
Matt Ocko, DCVCMatt Ocko
Winni Wintermeyer Photography
Ocko is a self-described "stubborn nerd" who has spent the past 25 years backing deep tech companies: startups built on scientific breakthroughs and advanced engineering rather than software alone.
On the day we spoke, the Trump administration awarded $2 billion in grants to nine quantum-computing companies, including $100 million each to DCVC-backed Atom Computing and Rigetti Computing. To Ocko, who founded DCVC in 2011, it was proof that deep tech bets can take years to mature, then become strategically essential and wildly lucrative.
DCVC's robotics portfolio includes nearly two dozen companies, including humanoid startup Agility Robotics, autonomous loading startup Slip Robotics, automated grocery fulfillment company Fulfil, and autonomous construction equipment company AIM.
"These companies are not the subject of week-by-week fawning Forbes articles," Ocko said. "But when they win, they win asymptotically. They win gigantically."
Neil Mehta, Greenoaks CapitalNeil Mehta
Hieu Tran
Mehta is known for concentrated, long-term bets on technology companies. Greenoaks began paying close attention to robotics more than five years ago, as AI and computer vision started making machines more useful in the real world.
Greenoaks has backed The Bot Company, the home-robot startup founded by Kyle Vogt, who previously sold Twitch and Cruise. The startup is building a wheeled household robot, rather than a humanoid, designed to help with everyday tasks. Greenoaks led a $150 million round in 2025 that valued the company at $2 billion.
Greenoaks led a Series B investment in Mytra, a company building warehouse robots that move goods across a modular 3-D storage system without requiring customers to rebuild their facilities. The firm has also invested in Mind Robotics, a Rivian spinout building robots for industrial deployment, and Physical Intelligence, which is building general-purpose AI models for the physical world.
Greenoaks' investments have been characterized by close partnership with founding teams and a focus on exceptional customer experiences.
Jain's interest in robotics began when he moved from a small town in India to Mumbai for college and joined IIT Bombay's robotics club. Years later, at Lightspeed, he started looking for companies using computer vision to bring machines into the physical world.
He first backed Dexterity, a warehouse robotics startup. Later, after what he described as many "near-death experiences" testing self-driving cars, he invested in Aurora, an autonomous-trucking company.
Jain's latest robotics bet is Skild AI, where he was the founding investor and now serves on the board. The startup is building a general-purpose "brain" meant to work across different kinds of robots and tasks. Jain's thesis is that general-purpose robots will not arrive all at once because there still isn't enough real-world data to train them.
"My view is that we need to develop specific skills in robotics and build those into economically viable models, which will then converge into truly general-purpose robotics," Jain said.
Sarah Guo, ConvictionSarah Guo
Conviction
Guo spent nearly a decade at Greylock, becoming the firm's youngest general partner in 2018, before leaving in 2022 to launch Conviction, an early-stage AI fund.
She was the first backer of Sunday Robotics in 2024, a home-robot startup she said stood out because of its mix of "completely cracked researchers, a real commitment to building products that got deployed, and an Elon-style religion on delivering a mass-consumer product."
Sunday is preparing to launch Memo this fall as part of a beta program. Memo is a general-purpose wheeled home robot that can do dishes, fold laundry, and pull an espresso shot.
Guo is clear-eyed about the difficulty of the category. Robotics is capital-intensive and technically demanding, and American companies have struggled in adjacent hardware races, from self-driving cars to consumer electronics. Chinese manufacturers are formidable competitors on hardware costs. But Guo said robotics also requires a complete system combining hardware, software, and AI, plus top-tier research talent.
She is betting on the space because she believes the US needs robots and has the talent to build general-purpose systems.
"In terms of AI that will change people's lives, I can think of few things as valuable as giving people their time back, or filling some of the gaps we have in labor, such as in health and elder care," Guo said.
Seth Winterroth, EclipseSeth Winterroth
Eclipse
Winterroth is part of Eclipse's deep bench of investors focused on the physical economy. Since joining the firm at its founding in 2015, he said pure software investments have never excited him. "I've always been someone who enjoys zigging when other people are zagging," Winterroth said.
One early win was 6 River Systems, the warehouse robotics startup Shopify acquired for $450 million in 2019. The deal gave Winterroth a firsthand view of what it takes to build and sell robotics products.
Since then, he has built a broad robotics portfolio. He invested in Wayve in 2019, when the UK autonomous-driving startup's AI-first approach was still considered contrarian and the team had fewer than 20 people working out of a small Cambridge garage. Wayve is now valued at $8.6 billion and has a deal with Uber to launch self-driving vehicles in more than 10 markets.
Winterroth is also an investor and board member at Mytra, a warehouse-automation startup; Foxglove, a robotics software company; ForSight Robotics, which is developing a robotic system for eye surgery; and Blue Water Autonomy, a startup building autonomous naval ships.
"This is the very beginning," said Winterroth. "Anywhere that there is dangerous, dirty, and monotonous work being done in the physical world is ripe for robotic solutions."
Shahin Farshchi, Lux CapitalShahin Farshchi
Lux Capital
Farshchi's interest in robotics began with science fiction. He grew up watching Knight Rider and Star Trek, and said he was captivated by the idea that technology could give people superpowers. "A car that can drive itself felt like something that was achievable in my lifetime, even when I was a child," he said.
Decades later, as a partner at Lux Capital, Farshchi became an early investor in several companies that have defined modern robotics and autonomy, including self-driving-car startup Zoox in 2015 and warehouse-robotics startup Covariant in 2017. Both were later acquired by Amazon, in 2020 and 2024, respectively. He also backed Formic, a robotics-as-a-service startup that helps manufacturers deploy automation without paying for the equipment upfront.
Lux's broader robotics portfolio also includes Applied Intuition and Physical Intelligence.
"The zeitgeist today around robotics very much reminds me of the zeitgeist around self-driving cars back in 2012," Farshchi said.
Shaun Maguire, Sequoia CapitalShaun Maguire
Sequoia
Maguire's interest in hardware began at age 7, when his cousin showed up to Thanksgiving with a car full of computer parts and helped him build his first computer.He became obsessed with physics, earned a Ph.D. in quantum gravity at Caltech, and went on to found a space-launch company in 2009.
A few years ago, Maguire wrote an internal Sequoia memo he called the "Hardware Manifesto." His argument was that major software shifts depend on breakthroughs in hardware.
"You can't have the App Store without the iPhone. You can't have the iPhone without 20 years of work at Qualcomm and Broadcom building out cellular infrastructure. You can't have deep learning without the GPU," he said.
Maguire, who was also an early investor in SpaceX, believes AI will need a new generation of hardware to reach its full potential. He sees three forces pushing that shift faster than he expected: labor shortages, reshoring, and AI advances that make robots better at handling messy real-world situations.
His robotics investments include Neros, which develops unmanned drone systems for battlefield defense, and Mach Industries, a defense startup building unmanned hardware systems. He is especially excited about AMP Sortation, which uses cameras and robotic arms to identify recyclable items and sort them faster than people can.
Sven Strohband and Vinod Khosla, Khosla VenturesSven Strohband and Vinod Khosla
Erin Beach
Before becoming an investor, Strohband helped build one of the most important early autonomous vehicles. He was the lead engineer and project lead for Stanford's autonomous car Stanley, which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and is now featured at the Smithsonian.
Participating in the challenge was "mildly terrifying," Strohband said, but it also showed him why autonomy was starting to become possible. Sensor prices were falling, and advances in probabilistic robotics meant machines could begin making decisions under uncertainty rather than relying solely on prewritten rules.
Strohband joined Khosla Ventures in 2012, and his first investment was Blue River Technology, an agriculture robotics startup that used computer vision to distinguish crops from weeds. John Deere acquired the company for $305 million in 2017.
He now thinks about robotics investments in two buckets: companies building entirely new technical capabilities, and companies using modern robotics to solve specific customer problems. His recent bets include Waabi, an autonomous-trucking startup; AIM Intelligent Machines, which is building autonomy software for heavy equipment; and General Intuition, a research lab using games and simulation to train AI agents for real-world tasks. Strohband and Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla co-led the firm's investment in General Intuition.
Khosla has also been spending more time on robotics, with investments in Physical Intelligence, Field AI, and Genesis AI, which is building AI models and hardware for robots.
"Almost everybody in the 2030s will have a humanoid robot at home," Khosla said last year.
Trae Stephens, Founders FundTrae Stephens
Founders Fund
Stephens took an unusual path to venture capital. After studying at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and working for a US intelligence agency, he joined Palantir as an early employee, helping grow its defense business.
Peter Thiel recruited Stephens to Founders Fund in 2014. At a firm retreat, Stephens met Palmer Luckey, and the two developed the idea behind Anduril: bringing a Silicon Valley approach to advanced autonomous systems for defense. Anduril is now valued at $61 billion, and the company's president has said it is a "heavy participant" in the Middle East conflict.
Stephens gravitates toward investing in companies that combine software and hardware to solve real-world problems. His robotics investments include Hadrian, which automates precision manufacturing for aerospace and defense; Gecko Robotics, which uses robots to inspect critical infrastructure; and Physical Intelligence, which is developing general-purpose AI models for robots.
He believes that the biggest robotics companies will not be built on hardware alone, but by combining AI, software, and manufacturing know-how into systems that work reliably in the real world.
The US is adding jobs on net, but it's still a tough time to be job-searching.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
The job market is showing revived strength, despite big-name companies announcing layoffs.
The economy had its best three-month average job growth since early 2024.
But it's still hard for some to find a job, and inflation outpacing wage growth is a new issue.
From about 8,000 layoffs at Meta to thousands of cuts at Amazon, media outlets have been following high-profile employment changes.
However, cuts at major tech companies this year represent only a sliver of what's happening in the massive job market, filled with millions of workers and unemployed Americans across different industries and business sizes.
That larger job market is showing renewed strength, although there are still some bumps in the road. Overall job growth is more robust, layoffs remain pretty low, and it's not just the healthcare sector keeping it alive. On the downside, wage growth isn't keeping up with inflation anymore, while rising long-term unemployment and low hiring rates suggest it's still hard to find a new job if you're out of work.
The monthly jobs report out on June 5 showed the economy had three straight months of robust gains through May, well above what's needed to keep unemployment steady and the highest three-month average since early 2024.
"This spring really is solidifying that the labor market is returning to a growth pattern," said ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud. "Businesses are reaccelerating hiring, jobs are growing across different industries, and there's just a general sense of renewed energy in the market that was largely stagnant for most of the last year."
With now five months of data in 2026 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we break down how the job market is looking.
Overall job growth is at its strongest level in over two years
Let's first look at the good news.
The US added 172,000 jobs in May, about double the expected gain. The same jobs report showed upward revisions to the previous two months: from a job gain of 185,000 to 214,000 in March and from a gain of 115,000 to 179,000 in April. Together, that makes the highest three-month average since March 2024.
Healthcare, which has been an engine of growth for the past couple of years, isn't the only field propping up the job market. Leisure and hospitality had the highest net gain last month, likely partly driven by World Cup demand, followed by government and healthcare.
While many sectors are adding jobs, Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn's head of economics for the Americas, said there's still a lack of hiring momentum across the board. He said healthcare is the only sector that's largely been consistent over the past few years.
"The success or not for job seekers depends upon what sectors they are searching in and their location," said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.
Meanwhile, the April JOLTS report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed job openings surged to the highest rate since 2024, driven by professional and business services. Hamrick said the increase in job openings, muted layoffs and discharges, and low separations, "could set the stage for further acceleration in hiring."
Outside the gold-standard jobs reports from the BLS, private data releases showed the job market's strength. HR services platform Gusto highlighted in its monthly report that small businesses across most sectorsadded jobs last month, with gains across all US regions. ADP similarly reported that private job gains were strongacross firm sizes and in most sectors, with its chief economist, Nela Richardson, saying there's sustained momentum heading into the summer.
The healthy job growth in the job market doesn't mean people should dismiss high-profile layoff news at large companies.
"A thousand people losing their jobs, that's a thousand people," Bachaud said. "That's a very real, tangible number; for those thousand people, it's a very terrible experience." She added that 1,000 job cuts at one company don't move the overall US employment needle.
But wages aren't keeping up with inflation, and white-collar work is stagnating
The economy does have some pain points: ongoing uncertainty from the Iran war, inflation outpacing wage growth, and increased long-term unemployment.
The robust job gains don't mean we are out of the woods from the low-hire job market. "Tech is low-hire, some fire, while other sectors are low-hire, low-fire," Laura Ullrich, the director of economic research in North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said.
Finding work is persistently hard in some white-collar fields. The financial activities sector, where employment has generally been falling for about a year, lost 22,000 jobs in May. The information sector, which includes media and tech, has mainly experienced monthly job loss over the past few years.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the hiring rate dipped in April to 3.2%, which Glassdoor's chief economist Daniel Zhao wrote is comparable to the 2010s, when the job market was still recovering from the Great Recession. Amid low hiring, people aren't feeling too confident about finding a job, as seen in the low 1.9% quits rate, compared to a high of 3% during the Great Resignation period of 2021 and 2022.
It's also still hard to get out of long-term unemployment, or being unemployed for at least 27 weeks. Monthslong employment can have financial consequences, especially since many states offer just26 weeks of unemployment benefits. Of the 7 million unemployed people in the US, 27.5% had been unemployed for at least 27 weeks in May, which Ullrich said is fairly high in an economy with healthy job creation.
"People who have been unemployed are having a really hard time transitioning out of that unemployment, and employers don't really seem to be motivated to pull from that pool," Bachaud said.
Wage growth has recently crossed an unwelcome threshold: it isn't keeping up with inflation. Bachaud said this is especially creating financial strain for middle-income households. Inflation exceeded 4% for the first time since 2023 in May.
"More people are feeling worse off about their financial situation now than a year ago, and affordability is no doubt playing a role," Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at NerdWallet, said in written commentary. "Higher and higher gas and food prices impact households in a dramatic way — these are things we can't easily cut out of our budgets, or even reduce."
How are you doing in today's job market? Did you make a career trade-off, such as taking a lower-paying job because of better work-life balance? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com or fill out this form about career trade-offs.
