Google is moving further into the realm of physical AI by bringing its familiar robotics software platform under its wing.
Alphabet’s Intrinsic, which builds AI models and software designed to make industrial robots more accessible, will join Google, the companies announced Wednesday. Intrinsic will continue to be a separate entity within Google, but will work closely with Google DeepMind and leverage Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud services.
Alphabet declined to share information about the financing or the purchase price.
Intrinsic “graduated” to an independent Alphabet-owned company in 2021 after five years of development within Alphabet’s moonshot research division, Alphabet X. Other companies that have graduated from X include robotaxis company Waymo and drone delivery company Wing.
Wendy Tan White has been CEO of Intrinsic since its spin-out in 2021.
The company started in earnest. In April 2022, a few months after announcing its independence, Intrinsic acquired fellow robotics software company Vicarius. The purchase price was not disclosed, but Vicarious had raised about $250 million from venture capital and tech industry heavyweights like Jeff Bezos.
A few months later, Intrinsic acquired several commercial units of Open Robotics, a nonprofit organization that builds hardware and software platforms for the robotics industry.
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Despite this rapid expansion, Intrinsic laid off 20% of its workforce in January 2023.
The company introduced its first product, Flowstate, just a few months later. Flowstate is a software platform for developing robotics workflows aimed at developers with little robotics experience, and aligns with the company’s mission to make robotics more accessible.
Since then, the company has fine-tuned its technology, improved its simulation capabilities, and released its Intrinsic Vision AI model in late 2025.
In October 2025, Intrinsic announced a joint venture with electronics manufacturer Foxconn, in which the two companies will work together to develop general-purpose intelligent robots that will transform the way electronics are manufactured with the goal of full factory automation.
The company is currently working toward these goals in close collaboration with Google’s AI capabilities.
“By combining Google’s incredible AI and infrastructure, we will unlock the potential of physical AI for a much broader range of manufacturers and developers. This will fundamentally shift production from economics to operations, enabling truly advanced manufacturing,” Tan White said in a company blog post.
This move makes a lot of sense for Google, as many technology leaders, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, believe that physical AI is the next natural step in monetizing and advancing AI models and technology.
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