The AI Cattle Call for Materials

This week: AI runs a physical shop (paid), manufacture with mycelium, right-sized packaging, open-source exoskeleton, autonomous delivery of a car, circular rare mineral separation and recovery.

Jun 29, 2025

∙ Paid

Shop Talk

Capturing this week's zeitgeist

Manufacturers are under siege from inflation, cybersecurity threats, and supply chain chaos, and they're fighting back with AI. Rockwell Automation's 10th Annual State of Smart Manufacturing report shows that ”AI and machine learning will shape quality control, cybersecurity, and process optimization, ensuring [manufacturers] can take full advantage of accurate, timely data.” Perhaps most telling for the future workforce: 83% of manufacturers now prioritize analytical thinking and communication skills when recruiting the next generation, signaling a strong sense of a future with human-AI collaboration, in addition to a technical and engineering knowledge foundation.

Assembly Line

This week's most influential Industry 4.0 media.

🧠🤖 Can AI run a physical shop? Anthropic’s Claude tried and the results were gloriously, hilariously bad

✍️ Author: Michael Nuñez

The AI company’s assistant Claude spent about a month running a tiny store in their San Francisco office, and the results read like a business school case study written by someone who’d never actually run a business — which, it turns out, is exactly what happened.

The experiment, dubbed “Project Vend” and conducted in collaboration with AI safety evaluation company Andon Labs, is one of the first real-world tests of an AI system operating with significant economic autonomy. While Claude demonstrated impressive capabilities in some areas — finding suppliers, adapting to customer requests — it ultimately failed to turn a profit, got manipulated into giving excessive discounts, and experienced what researchers diplomatically called an “identity crisis.”

🍄‍🟫Why Mushrooms are Starting to Replace Everything

Autodesk-led collaboration brings AI-powered, climate-friendly solution to affordable housing with panel starts at Ecovative, which grows sustainable biomaterials by combining agricultural byproducts such as corn stover with the living rootlike structure of mushrooms called mycelium. /Autodesk/
GM just took a stake in a startup that makes imitation leather out of mushrooms /CNN/

🦾📦 Right-Sized Packaging and Warehouse Automation

The Holy Grail of Automation: Now a Robot Can Unload a Truck /WSJ/
Brightpick Launches Autopicker 2.0, the First Multi-Purpose Warehouse Robot to Match Human-Level Performance /Brightpick/
Plus One Robotics, beRobox launch DepalOne system for depalletizing /AutomatedWarehouse/
Comau unveils MYMR, a scalable autonomous mobile robot family engineered to optimize intralogistics efficiency /Comau/
Cyngn Highlights Next-Generation Robotics, Automation and AI Technologies at Automatica in Collaboration with NVIDIA /PR Newswire/ and Closing of $15 Million Registered Direct Offering /Cyngn/

🦿 OpenExo: An open-source modular exoskeleton to augment human function

✍️ Author: Jack R. Williams, Chance F. Cuddeback, Shanpu Fang, et. al

Although the field of wearable robotic exoskeletons is rapidly expanding, there are several barriers to entry that discourage many from pursuing research in this area, ultimately hindering growth. Chief among these is the lengthy and costly development process to get an exoskeleton from conception to implementation and the necessity for a broad set of expertise. In addition, many exoskeletons are designed for a specific utility and are confined to the laboratory environment, limiting the flexibility of the designed system to adapt to answer new questions and explore new domains. To address these barriers, we present OpenExo, an open-source /GitHub/ modular untethered exoskeleton framework that provides access to all aspects of the design process, including software, electronics, hardware, and control schemes. To demonstrate the utility of this exoskeleton framework, we performed benchtop and experimental validation testing with the system across multiple configurations, including hip-only incline assistance, ankle-only indoor and outdoor assistance, hip-and-ankle load carriage assistance, and elbow-only weightlifting assistance. All aspects of the software architecture, electrical components, hip and Bowden-cable transmission designs, and control schemes are freely available for other researchers to access, use, and modify when looking to address research questions in the field of wearable exoskeletons.

New Product Introduction

Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services

🚙🧠 World's First Autonomous Delivery of a Car by Tesla

This Tesla drove itself from Gigafactory Texas to its new owner's home roughly 30min away crossing parking lots, highways and the city to reach it's new owner. The first autonomous vehicle delivery of it's kind in the world.

China’s Electric-Vehicle Factories Have Become Tourist Hot Spots /Wired/
Inside the spectacular rise and crash of India’s largest EV company /Rest of World/

♻️ World-first AI platform launched to unlock $100 billion-dollar waste data on brand circularity

Greyparrot’s latest product, Deepnest, delivers detailed, product-level data to brands. This unlocks commercial insights by tracking packaging performance by brand, material, product type, and region. It reveals exactly how packaging moves through the waste system: what’s sorted, recycled, or lost. No assumptions or guesswork: just the objective, data-led truth.

Powered by Greyparrot Analyzer AI-camera systems in material recovery facilities, Deepnest relies on the world’s most comprehensive household packaging waste database - these systems process over 40 billion waste objects annually across more than 20 countries. Greyparrot currently detects $1 billion worth of recyclable materials in the waste streams it monitors, and estimates that, if rolled out globally, its systems could uncover up to $100 billion in recyclable value every year by 2040.

⛏️ Lynas achieves first separated Heavy Rare Earths production

Now that Lynas has begun to produce dysprosium — a key material for manufacturing electric vehicles and wind turbine generators — it represents a major milestone in diversifying the supply chain for heavy rare earths beyond China, according to TechXplore.

Business Transactions

This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.

Startup Central to Launch USA's First Fully Integrated Startup Manufacturing Hub and VC Accelerator in Tempe /PR Newswire/
Clarios Announces Plans to Build U.S. Manufacturing Technology & Training Center /PR Newswire/

🇩🇪 Neura Robotics Eyes Up to €1 Billion Round

German startup Neura Robotics is targeting to raise as much as €1 billion ($1.2 billion) in new funding as the company prepares to debut a humanoid robot, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is competing against several well-capitalized firms making bipedal robots designed to lift heavy objects and automate repetitive tasks, powered by rapid advances in artificial intelligence software.

🇬🇧 PhysicsX Raises $135M Series B to Usher in a New Era of AI-Native Engineering and Manufacturing

PhysicsX, a London-headquartered company accelerating industrial innovation with AI, announced that it has raised $135 million as part of its Series B financing. The round was led by Atomico, with participation from Temasek, Siemens, Applied Materials, July Fund, and continued support from existing investors including General Catalyst, NGP, Radius Capital, Standard Investments, and Allen & Co. The capital raised will accelerate the company’s global growth and the industrial adoption of its enterprise software platform across aerospace & defense, automotive, semiconductors, materials, and energy.

🇺🇸 Halter Raises $100M in Funding to Increase Productivity on Cattle Ranches

Halter, a technology company increasing productivity on US cattle ranches with its virtual fencing and animal management system, has raised $100M in a Series D fundraising round, valuing the company at $1 billion. The round was led by BOND, a global technology investment firm, with new investment from NewView and continued support from early investors Bessemer Venture Partners, DCVC, Blackbird, Icehouse Ventures and Promus Ventures.

Halter is the leading system to run a cattle ranch. The Halter system includes a smart collar for each cow, towers for connectivity, and an app that lets ranchers manage their cattle and pasture from their phone. Cattle are guided by the collar’s sound and vibration cues. Ranchers can virtually fence, move, and monitor their cattle 24/7.

🇺🇸 Elemental Advanced Materials Closes $20M to Scale Production of Carbon Nanomaterials, Clean Hydrogen, and Recovered Critical Minerals

Elemental Advanced Materials, a leader in low-emission carbon nanomaterials and hydrogen production, announced the close of a $20 million funding round led by Taranis, a climate technology investment firm. The funding will enable Elemental to scale its patented, single-step manufacturing process that converts hydrocarbon-rich waste – such as plastics, tank bottoms, and gas by-products – into high-performance carbon nanomaterials and clean hydrogen. This CO₂e-neutral process also supports the recovery of critical minerals from end-of-life electronics, further contributing to circularity in supply chains.