Maven Robotics raises $100 million to build more warehouse robots
The company plans to build 250 third-generation robots, starting with the unglamorous but useful job of assembling mixed pallets.
The briefing
Maven Robotics raises $100 million to expand its warehouse fleet, Moonshot AI reportedly targets a $2 billion annualised revenue rate, and NVIDIA adds cloud gaming access with a day-pass route for testing the service.
Maven Robotics raises $100 million to build more warehouse robots
Maven Robotics has raised $100 million to expand its wheeled warehouse fleet. Its existing work centres on mixed pallets, while broader ambitions depend on teaching the machines new handling skills.
RoboStrategy, LocalGlobe, Vine Ventures and XTX Ventures backed the funding, Tim Fernholz reports for TechCrunch. Maven also plans to begin designing a fourth-generation platform.
Chief executive Hamza Derbas says Maven has as many as eight robots working 16 hours a day, with uptime of at least 99%. That follows two years of work with an initial consumer-goods customer and a few other partners.
From incoming boxes to shop orders
The robots use wheeled bases and two arms capable of lifting up to 30 kilograms. Their main task is mixed palletising: taking boxed goods arriving from factories and arranging combinations for individual shops.
Maven's approach connects warehouse management systems with physical handling, rather than treating a single robot movement as the whole job.
The next push involves collecting training data for materials handling, then moving towards automation and fabrication. Maven has developed pincer-like gloves through which people can demonstrate movements. Those broader tasks require manipulation capabilities beyond its current pallet work.
For warehouse operators, Maven offers a concrete automation use case: building shop-specific loads from incoming goods. The planned fleet expansion would extend that work, but current uptime claims describe only a handful of robots.
Market signal
Moonshot AI reportedly targets $2 billion annualised revenue by year-end
Moonshot AI reportedly aims to reach a $2 billion annualised revenue rate by the end of 2026. Its open-weight K3 models have substantial usage, while Anthropic alleges misuse of Claude outputs.
The target follows the summer release of K3, whose model weights are freely available. Russell Brandom's TechCrunch account, citing Bloomberg's reporting, puts Moonshot's ambition at twice its reported August run rate.
Annualised revenue projects a pace of sales over a full year. It is not a claim that Moonshot has already collected $2 billion, nor a measure of profit.
OpenRouter data cited in the report shows K3 models generating as many as 300 billion tokens a day on its system, despite a slight decline in usage in recent months. That activity is not itself a revenue figure.
A dispute over training data
Anthropic alleges that Moonshot collected more than 23 million responses from its models for training. It also alleges that nearly 300,000 Kimi requests were routed to Claude Opus, effectively substituting Anthropic's model for Moonshot's own.
These are Anthropic's allegations, not established findings of wrongdoing.
For businesses assessing open-weight model suppliers, Moonshot's target provides a revenue ambition to distinguish from usage statistics. Neither token volumes nor an annualised sales target establishes profitability or resolves the dispute over training practices.
What to watch
NVIDIA adds WARDOGS and Valheim's final biome to cloud gaming
NVIDIA has announced nine additions to GeForce NOW alongside support for Valheim's 1.0 update. WARDOGS arrives in early access, with availability for other listed games dependent on cloud onboarding.
BULKHEAD's WARDOGS brings battles involving up to 100 players across three teams to GeForce NOW at its early-access launch. NVIDIA's GeForce NOW Community team announced the addition alongside Bus Simulator 27 and Valheim's Deep North update.
Streaming moves the game's processing and installation off the player's device. NVIDIA says Ultimate members can play WARDOGS with RTX 5080-class cloud performance on supported devices; that is the company's performance description, not an independent test.
What players can try
Valheim's 1.0 update takes the survival game out of early access and adds its final biome. Members can stream it through Steam and Xbox Store, with full crossplay accompanying new platform versions.
Bus Simulator 27 is also streaming. The wider list of nine additions includes Death Stranding Director's Cut through Epic Games Store, but listed store release dates do not guarantee simultaneous GeForce NOW availability. Games are added as onboarding progresses.
Players can buy a day pass to test premium streaming. NVIDIA says its cost can then be applied towards a first monthly membership.
Players with supported devices can try these games without a large local installation or a PC upgrade. The day pass offers a way to test premium streaming before choosing a monthly membership.
What to watch next
- For warehouse operators, Maven offers a concrete automation use case: building shop-specific loads from incoming goods. The planned fleet expansion would extend that work, but current uptime claims describe only a handful of robots.
- For businesses assessing open-weight model suppliers, Moonshot's target provides a revenue ambition to distinguish from usage statistics. Neither token volumes nor an annualised sales target establishes profitability or resolves the dispute over training practices.
- Players with supported devices can try these games without a large local installation or a PC upgrade. The day pass offers a way to test premium streaming before choosing a monthly membership.
The takeaway
For warehouse operators, Maven offers a concrete automation use case: building shop-specific loads from incoming goods. The planned fleet expansion would extend that work, but current uptime claims describe only a handful of robots.
The editor’s view
For businesses assessing open-weight model suppliers, Moonshot's target provides a revenue ambition to distinguish from usage statistics. Neither token volumes nor an annualised sales target establishes profitability or resolves the dispute over training practices.