Anthropic held acquisition talks with Physical Intelligence

A weekend rumor that Anthropic was acquiring robotics startup Physical Intelligence spread fast across AI social media, even after a denial from the startup’s CEO. The rumor, which tech blogger Robert Scoble set off with a post on X, turned out not to be entirely spurious: Anthropic and Physical Intelligence did hold acquisition talks this spring, according to The Information, so Scoble may have gotten the specifics wrong without being wrong that something had happened.

Physical Intelligence isn’t an obscure name. Co-founded by investor-operator Lachy Groom, the startup has raised more than $1 billion and was reportedly in talks this spring for another $1 billion round at an $11 billion valuation. Its π0.5 model is apparently among the more widely used robot “brains” in robotics research. Physical Intelligence CEO Karol Hausman told employees the reports weren’t true via a Slack message featuring a gif of a character from “The Office” shaking her head no — hardly the most vigorous denial. Groom did not respond to a TechCrunch request for comment sent Monday night.

Anthropic has made four known acquisitions this year; OpenAI has made at least 17 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. Robotics fits a pattern: physical-world understanding may be a prerequisite for superintelligent systems that no amount of internet text can substitute for. OpenAI built an early robotic hand that could solve a Rubik’s Cube, then shut its robotics group down in 2021, before quietly rebuilding a humanoid robotics lab starting in 2024 and going public with “OpenAI Robotics” in late May. Anthropic, meanwhile, has published research on Claude assisting non-experts with robotics tasks, including a Project Fetch test last November and a second phase in June that Anthropic said saw a newer model complete the same tasks roughly 20 times faster than the best human-plus-Claude team from the year before.

Buying an existing robotics team would let Anthropic skip years of that work. But Physical Intelligence’s investor base looks a lot like OpenAI’s own, including Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, and reportedly Founders Fund in its newest round — and OpenAI itself is an investor in Physical Intelligence, raising questions about whether its early stake carries information rights or a right of first refusal over any sale to a rival.

Why it matters

If Physical Intelligence is genuinely in play, OpenAI — already a shareholder and already racing to beat Anthropic in robotics — may have a more obvious claim to it than Anthropic does.