TL;DR: Physical AI, robots and autonomous systems that can see, understand and act in the real world, is leaving the lab. Using Bessemer's new atlas as a base, we mapped 29 private leaders across four arenas. This is Part 1; Part 2 is coming.

"Embodied intelligence" is having its moment. After decades of promise, robots are moving out of research labs and onto factory floors, city streets, battlefields and into homes, driven by three forces at once: foundation-model breakthroughs, collapsing hardware costs, and real labor shortages. Bessemer projects up to 2.5 billion robots worldwide by 2035 and calls this one of the biggest technological inflections of the generation.

Below are 29 private companies (Waymo included) building the machines, grouped into four categories. Every name links to the company.

Industrial Robotics

The robots quietly rewiring warehouses, construction sites and factories.

Bedrock Robotics: retrofit autonomy kit that turns existing excavators and dozers into self-driving machines.

Cobot: Proxie, a collaborative mobile manipulator for material handling.

DroneDeploy: drone-and-robot reality capture to map and monitor jobsites.

Mind Robotics: AI-native industrial robots for dexterous manufacturing (a Rivian spinoff).

Mytra: software-defined warehouse robotics for moving and storing pallets.

Tutor Intelligence: robot arms as a service for pick-and-sort in manufacturing and logistics.

Sereact: Cortex, a vision-language-action model for hardware-agnostic robotic picking.

ANYbotics: ANYmal, a quadruped robot for autonomous industrial inspection.

RobCo: modular, no-code robot arms for small and mid-size manufacturers.

Consumer Robotics

Humanoids and home robots aiming for the living room.

Figure: general-purpose humanoids (Figure 03) running its own Helix AI.

Matic: a vision-based, privacy-first robot vacuum-and-mop for the home.

Sunday Robotics: Memo, a home robot that learns chores like dishes and laundry.

Zipline: autonomous delivery drones for food, groceries and medical supplies.

1X: NEO, a bipedal humanoid built for the home.

The Bot Company: a household robot for everyday chores, from Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt.

Coco: autonomous electric sidewalk robots for urban last-mile delivery.

Autonomous Vehicles

The self-driving stacks moving people and freight.

Waymo: the robotaxi service built on the Waymo Driver.

Applied Intuition: simulation and software toolchain for autonomous vehicles and ADAS.

Wayve: end-to-end, mapless embodied-AI driving software.

Waabi: a generative-AI autonomy stack for self-driving trucks and robotaxis.

Nuro: a licensable Level 4 self-driving system, the Nuro Driver.

Defense

Autonomy for drones, ships and the battlefield.

Anduril: autonomous defense systems and the Lattice command platform.

Neros: low-cost, American-made FPV attack drones (Archer).

NODA AI: cross-vendor autonomy orchestration for military robot and drone fleets.

Auterion: AuterionOS, a drone operating system for defense and commercial fleets.

Saronic: autonomous unmanned surface vessels (sea drones) for the US Navy.

Shield AI: Hivemind, an AI pilot for autonomous drones and aircraft.

Skydio: AI drones for defense, public safety and infrastructure inspection.

Breaker Industries: Avalon, voice-controlled software orchestrating multi-domain robot teams.

Why it matters for crypto

Physical AI and crypto are converging faster than most think. As fleets of robots, drones and autonomous vehicles come online, they need to transact, coordinate and prove their work without humans in the loop, exactly the problem DePIN networks, machine-to-machine payments and onchain identity are built to solve. A world of billions of machines is also a world of billions of economic agents that can hold wallets, pay per task and settle in stablecoins. The hardware layer mapped above is where much of crypto's "agentic payments" and DePIN thesis will actually get tested.

This is Part 1 of our Physical AI map. Part 2, covering foundation models, agriculture, health and robotics infrastructure, is coming next.

Source: Bessemer Venture Partners, "50 Startups Transforming Industries With Physical AI." Categorization adapted by CryptoDiffer. Not financial advice.