The Anthropic-Physical Intelligence rumor roiling AI Twitter

It’s been a big year for AI acquisitions - so big that most of them barely register anymore. Anthropic and OpenAI have each gone on buying sprees, snapping up developer tooling, AI services shops, and product-testing startups to convert model capability into enterprise revenue and extend their reach faster than the other.

Which is what made a weekend rumor about Anthropic acquiring robotics startup Physical Intelligence stand out. It spread exceedingly fast, even after a denial from Physical Intelligence’s CEO.

What Physical Intelligence Is

Part of that ties to who’s involved. Physical Intelligence isn’t some obscure robotics shop. It was co-founded by Lachy Groom, an investor-operator whose star has been on the rise in Silicon Valley in recent years; it has raised more than $1 billion (and was reportedly in talks this spring for another $1 billion round at an $11 billion valuation); and its π0.5 model is apparently among the more widely used robot brains in robotics research.

The Denial and the Talks

As it turns out, the rumor wasn’t completely spurious. Anthropic and Physical Intelligence actually did hold acquisition talks this spring, according to The Information, so tech blogger Robert Scoble - whose weekend post on X set off the frenzy - may have gotten the specifics wrong without being wrong that something had happened.

Physical Intelligence’s response to the rumor mill wasn’t the world’s most vigorous denial, it should be noted. According to The Information, Physical Intelligence CEO Karol Hausman told employees the reports weren’t true via a Slack message containing a gif of a character from “The Office” shaking her head no. Groom, for his part, did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, sent Monday night.

Anthropic has made four known acquisitions this year; OpenAI has been more aggressive, acquiring at least 17 companies since 2023. Both are also, of course, now preparing to go public. Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO on June 1, followed by OpenAI a week later, setting up what could be two of the largest U.S. stock debuts in history.

Why Robotics?

So why robotics, why now? The likeliest answer is that physical-world understanding may be a prerequisite for superintelligent systems, and no amount of internet text can substitute for it.

OpenAI’s Robotics Journey

OpenAI’s own history here is instructive. It built an early robotic hand that could solve a Rubik’s Cube, then shut the entire robotics group down in 2021, with co-founder Wojciech Zaremba later saying the approach was missing pieces needed for real superintelligence. The team came back in 2024, quietly building a humanoid robotics lab in San Francisco, before CEO Sam Altman made it official in late May, announcing “OpenAI Robotics” was hiring and describing a near-term focus on robots for infrastructure work, with a personal robot for everyone as the long-term goal.

Anthropic’s Approach

Anthropic hasn’t built anything resembling OpenAI’s hardware lab. What it has done is publish a string of research pieces through its internal group that stress-tests frontier capabilities for safety purposes. That included Project Fetch last November, where Anthropic staff tested how much Claude could help non-experts program a robot dog and a second phase in June that, according to Anthropic, found a newer model completed the same tasks roughly 20 times faster than the best human-plus-Claude team from the year before.

Buying an existing team with robotics expertise would let Anthropic skip years of work.

The Complication with OpenAI’s Stake

There’s a possible complication, though. Physical Intelligence was founded in San Francisco roughly two years ago by Groom, former Google researchers, and professors from Stanford and Berkeley, and its early investor base looks a lot like OpenAI’s own, including Khosla Ventures and Thrive Capital. Founders Fund - also a major OpenAI investor - was reportedly involved in Physical Intelligence’s newest funding round earlier this year.

In fact, OpenAI is itself an investor in Physical Intelligence, so it isn’t just a peripheral player; it’s a stakeholder in a company that its chief rival was reportedly in talks to buy very recently. That raises questions around whether OpenAI’s early investment came with any information rights, or a right of first refusal over a sale to a competitor - the kind of protective provisions that large strategic investors sometimes negotiate for precisely this scenario.

That leaves open the possibility that if Physical Intelligence is actually in play, OpenAI - already a shareholder, already close to Groom, already trying to ensure it bests Anthropic in robotics - may have the more obvious claim to it than Anthropic does. We asked OpenAI these questions earlier today and the company didn’t respond.