Anthropic and robotics startup Physical Intelligence held acquisition talks this spring, according to a report in The Information cited by TechCrunch on July 21, adding substance to a weekend rumor that Physical Intelligence's chief executive publicly denied.
What we know
Tech blogger Robert Scoble kicked off the frenzy with a weekend post on X claiming Anthropic was acquiring Physical Intelligence. Physical Intelligence CEO Karol Hausman told employees the reports were not true via a Slack message, per The Information, but the outlet still confirmed spring-2026 talks between the two companies. Anthropic and Lachy Groom, Physical Intelligence's investor and co-founder, did not respond to TechCrunch's inquiries.
Why robotics, why now
Anthropic and OpenAI have each gone on 2026 acquisition sprees to convert model capability into enterprise revenue and, both companies argue internally, to prepare for real-world deployment. Anthropic has published Project Fetch research showing Claude helping non-experts program a robot dog, while OpenAI relaunched OpenAI Robotics in late May with a mandate to build humanoids for infrastructure work. Buying an existing robotics team would let Anthropic skip years of hardware and data-collection work.
Physical Intelligence's investor tangle
Physical Intelligence is not just any target. Co-founded by ex-Google researchers and Stanford/Berkeley professors, it has raised more than $1 billion and, per prior reporting, was in talks this spring for another $1 billion round at an $11 billion valuation. Its π0.5 model is among the most-used robot brains in academic robotics.
The wrinkle: OpenAI is itself an investor in Physical Intelligence, alongside Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital and Founders Fund — the same syndicate deeply enmeshed in OpenAI. That raises the awkward possibility that any Anthropic move on Physical Intelligence would run straight into OpenAI's information rights or right of first refusal, if such provisions exist.
Reading the tea leaves before two IPOs
Both Anthropic and OpenAI have confidentially filed for IPOs in the past two months, and each is trying to lock down physical-AI capability before public markets weigh in. Whether or not this specific deal ever closes, the fact that talks happened at all reframes the robotics M&A landscape for the second half of the year — including large recent moves like Blackstone's Futronic buy and Travis Kalanick's Atoms round.
Reporting based on coverage from TechCrunch, The Information and public statements from Physical Intelligence.