Anthropic acquisition talks with Physical Intelligence highlight rising robotics stakes in AI race

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Anthropic robotics acquisition talks

Highlights

Anthropic held acquisition talks with Physical Intelligence, which has raised more than $1 billion and was co-founded by Lachy Groom, this spring.
Anthropic and OpenAI, both preparing for major IPOs in June, are accelerating robotics-related acquisitions to strengthen AI model capabilities for enterprise applications.
Any Physical Intelligence sale faces complexity as OpenAI is an investor alongside overlapping backers like Khosla Ventures and Thrive Capital, raising competitive and information rights issues.

Spring talks put rumor in context

As first reported by TechCrunch, citing The Information, Anthropic and Physical Intelligence did hold acquisition talks this spring, suggesting the weekend speculation circulating on X was not entirely baseless even if some details were disputed. The rumor spread quickly after a post by tech blogger Robert Scoble, and it continued to gain traction despite a denial from Physical Intelligence CEO Karol Hausman.

Hausman reportedly told employees in a Slack message that the reports were not true, using a gif from “The Office” to convey the response. Physical Intelligence, founded in San Francisco about two years ago, has drawn unusual attention for a young robotics company because it was co-founded by investor-operator Lachy Groom, has raised more than $1 billion, and its π0.5 model is described as one of the more widely used robot systems in robotics research.

Groom did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, sent Monday night. The reported talks emerge during a period when Anthropic and OpenAI are both pursuing acquisitions more aggressively as they seek to convert model performance into enterprise products and strategic scale.

Robotics adds a new competitive layer

Anthropic has made four known acquisitions this year, while OpenAI has acquired at least 17 companies since 2023. Both companies are also preparing to go public, with Anthropic confidentially filing for an IPO on June 1 and OpenAI following a week later, setting up what could become two of the largest U.S. stock market debuts in history.

The strategic logic for a robotics move is tied to the view that physical-world understanding may be important for building more advanced AI systems. Anthropic has not built a hardware lab like OpenAI’s, but it has published safety-focused research including Project Fetch, where staff tested how Claude could help non-experts program a robot dog; in a second phase in June, Anthropic said a newer model completed the same tasks about 20 times faster than the best human-plus-Claude team from the prior year.

Any deal for Physical Intelligence could also be complicated by its investor base. OpenAI is itself an investor in the startup, alongside backers that overlap with OpenAI’s network, including Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, and reportedly Founders Fund in the company’s newest funding round earlier this year. That creates potential questions over whether OpenAI holds information rights or other protective provisions that could matter if a sale to a direct rival is under discussion.

In our earlier report on the Federal Reserve’s access gap to Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview, we explained how the central bank warned major banks about potential cybersecurity risks tied to the model yet still lacked access to the same tool for months. We also outlined how Anthropic is distributing Mythos through Project Glasswing to a limited group of large institutions, raising broader questions about AI governance, oversight, and who gets early access to high-impact capabilities.

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