A Google-backed robotics startup has opened the doors to a large-scale robot training center and introduced a new humanoid robot, marking a significant step toward bringing these machines into everyday commercial use.
The Austin-based company, Apptronik, announced the launch of its new facility on Tuesday. Developed in partnership with Google DeepMind, the center is intended to bridge the gap between small-scale pilot programs and full production deployments of humanoid robots.
The facility, called Robot Park, spans nearly 90,000 square feet in Austin and is home to fleets of humanoid robots carrying out tasks in logistics, manufacturing, and retail settings. The work performed there generates training data used to power artificial intelligence models.
Alongside the facility announcement, Apptronik also unveiled Apollo 2, its newest humanoid robot. The machine is available in both a two-legged walking version and a wheeled version, and has already been in use as the company’s data collection platform for more than a year.
The data gathered at Robot Park feeds directly into Gemini Robotics, Google’s robotics AI model, as part of Apptronik’s ongoing research collaboration with Google DeepMind.
CEO Jeff Cardenas described the facility as a dual-purpose operation. “We have a factory that produces robots, we also have a factory that produces data,” he said, calling Robot Park the driving force behind developing production-ready AI models.
Cardenas confirmed that the company has built “hundreds” of Apollo 2 robots, though he declined to share specific deployment figures. He also offered a timeline for wider rollout, saying, “We’ll continue to pilot through this year, and then we’ll start to see real production versions … in 2027 and beyond.”
Apptronik previously announced a $520 million funding round in February, which placed the company’s valuation at roughly $5 billion.
