Qualcomm, Smurfit Westrock, Capri and More Lead This Week's Key Deals

Movements to form corporate alliances across different industries are gathering pace, centered on physical AI, in which robots and automobiles move autonomously through artificial intelligence. Five companies including the herbal medicine maker Tsumura and the machinery trading firm Yamazen have recently opened a data collection center for physical AI in Narashino City, Chiba Prefecture, where up to 40 robots will repeatedly perform tasks to train robots capable of acting autonomously. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Fanuc, and Yaskawa Electric, Japan's three major robot makers, are partnering with Fujitsu and the American company Nvidia, while about 20 companies including Kyocera, Kobe Steel, and the software developer Alm are pooling data and expertise with the aim of automating the processing techniques of skilled engineers. Noetra, in which 44 companies including SoftBank and NEC participate, is independently developing an AI foundation model that will serve as the brain of physical AI, aiming for practical application in fiscal 2030, and the government has decided to provide more than 380 billion yen in support for the project this fiscal year.

Innodata Inc. has opened a motion-capture research and development laboratory in New Jersey aimed at training humanoids, industrial robots and other physical AI systems. Developed with Vicon, the facility uses high-precision infrared optical tracking cameras capable of measuring movement at sub-millimeter accuracy, capturing 3D movement directly rather than inferring it from 2D video. Customers can purchase off-the-shelf motion-capture datasets, commission customized projects or send robots to the lab for independent performance testing, and Innodata can also provide external validation of robots' internal telemetry. The move builds on Innodata's earlier robotics initiatives, including successful egocentric data-collection pilots with leading robotics companies during the second quarter, when revenues rose 58% year over year to $92.1 million and adjusted EBITDA increased 92% to $25.4 million. Innodata also reiterated its expectation for at least 40% revenue growth in 2026, though the company said the pace at which pilot projects convert into large commercial programs will be critical.

FORT Robotics and Newbury Street II Acquisition Corp announced the confidential submission of a draft registration statement on Form S-4 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for their previously disclosed business combination. Upon closing, the combined company will be named FORT Robotics Holdings, Inc. and is expected to list on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol FROB, creating the first publicly traded company dedicated principally to the safe and scalable deployment of physical AI. The transaction values FORT at an enterprise value of approximately $556.6 million, comprising a pre-money equity value of $500.0 million. The deal is expected to provide approximately $201 million in gross proceeds, consisting of cash held in Newbury Street II's trust account assuming no redemptions and committed investments, including approximately $31 million of committed common equity through PIPE and Non-Redemption Agreement investments, delivering approximately $182 million of net cash to the combined company's balance sheet. FORT's Trust Layer safety platform is deployed across more than 19,500 units to over 600 customers, including Agility Robotics, DoorDash, Cobot, Zoox, Textron, and Google DeepMind, and the company grew revenue 62% year-over-year in 2025 at a 66% gross margin. The business combination is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 or the first quarter of 2027, subject to Newbury Street II shareholder approval, SEC review, regulatory approvals, and Nasdaq listing approval.

Advanced Micro Devices has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs, an artificial intelligence model and research company led by AI pioneer Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $8.2 billion that is expected to close by the end of 2026. World Labs specializes in spatial-intelligence models that generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, images and video, and is also developing technologies for robotic learning and simulation. AMD said the deal will give it deeper visibility into how emerging AI workloads are evolving across reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI, helping it tailor future hardware, software and system architectures, and strengthening its position in physical AI and robotics alongside its Ryzen AI Embedded X100 processors and Kria AI Robotics Developer Platform. The acquisition fits AMD's shift from selling individual chips toward becoming a full-system AI infrastructure provider, complementing its Instinct, EPYC, Pensando and ROCm ecosystem and its recently launched Helios rack-scale AI platform, which AMD says offers up to 15% higher inference throughput at the same rack power and up to 30% more tokens per dollar than competing solutions. The deal comes as AMD's Data Center revenues surged 107% year over year to $6.7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, with management expecting Data Center segment revenues to more than double year over year in 2027 and estimating the data-center AI accelerator market will reach roughly $1.4 trillion by 2030.