Flexing its muscle in physical artificial intelligence (AI), Google said it is folding its robotics subsidiary, Intrinsic, back into its core business, ending Intrinsic’s five-year run as an independent moonshot under the Alphabet umbrella.
The consolidation not only signals Google’s intent to dominate the industrial automation market, much as it did the smartphone industry with Android, but it also reassigns Intrinsic from Alphabet’s Other Bets category into Google’s primary ecosystem. The move also grants the robotics team direct access to the company’s most powerful AI models, including Gemini, and the massive infrastructure of Google Cloud.
The strategy essentially borrows a page from Google’s playbook. Just as Android provided a universal operating system for diverse hardware from Samsung to Xiaomi, Intrinsic aims to provide the software plumbing for industrial titans like FANUC, KUKA, and Universal Robots. By integrating Intrinsic with the DeepMind research unit, Google is effectively collapsing the distance between cutting-edge lab research and the assembly line. For manufacturers, this means robots that no longer require manual resets for every minor change in a part’s position, but can instead “think” their way through a task.
“It doesn’t matter what the hardware is and it doesn’t matter what the AI model is,” Intrinsic CEO Wendy Tan White told CNBC. “We will help you put that together.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has reportedly echoed that sentiment, internally labeling the project the “Android of robotics.” By creating a standardized platform — spotlighted by its web-based Flowstate environment — Google lets manufacturers build complex robotic applications without writing thousands of lines of custom code for every specific machine.
The timing reflects a broader industry shift. As AI moves beyond digital chatbots and image generation, the race is on to master physical AI systems that can see, reason, and react in the real world.
McKinsey projects the market for general-purpose robots could reach $370 billion by 2040, a prize Google is eager to claim as it faces competition from Amazon.com Inc., Tesla Inc., and others.
To be true, Google’s history with robotics has been rocky. The company famously acquired and then sold Boston Dynamics and Schaft nearly a decade ago after failing to find a clear commercial path. However, the generative AI explosion has changed the calculus.
In mid-2025, Google debuted Gemini Robotics, a model capable of translating high-level reasoning into physical commands. Recent partnerships with humanoid robot developer Apptronik and a renewed collaboration with Boston Dynamics’ Atlas program suggest Google is finally ready to link its digital brains to mechanical bodies.
The move also addresses a surging demand in electronics manufacturing. Last year, Intrinsic partnered with Foxconn to deploy AI-driven robots in U.S. factories, specifically to help scale the production of AI servers. As Google doubles its serving capacity every six months to keep up with AI demand, automating the production of the hardware itself has become a mission-critical objective.
