Meta joins the robotics race

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Silicon Valley’s robotics race just got a surprising recent player — and Meta’s not playing by the standard rules.

While other tech giants rush to construct their very own machines, Zuck and co. are betting on becoming the foundational layer that powers all of them.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Meta sets sights on humanoid robotics development

• Perplexity launches freemium Deep Research feature

• Find out how to develop data-driven content strategies

• NBA showcases AI and robotics at 2025 All-Star Weekend

• 4 recent AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🦾 Meta sets sights on humanoid robotics development

The Rundown: Meta is launching a brand new initiative to develop AI, hardware, and software platforms for humanoid robots, aiming to develop into the foundational tech provider for the industry slightly than constructing consumer products.

The main points:

• A brand new team inside Meta’s Reality Labs division, led by former Cruise CEO Marc Whitten, will deal with robot hardware, AI systems, and safety standards.

• Meta plans to leverage its existing AI and sensor tech from AR/VR development to create a software platform on which other manufacturers can construct.

• Meta has reportedly discussed potential partnerships with robotics firms like Unitree and Figure AI, focusing initially on household robots.

• While not planning its own branded robot, the corporate goals to offer an underlying platform just like how Android powers smartphones.

Why it matters: Everyone appears to be stepping into the robotics game, with reports of Apple and OpenAI also exploring the hyper-competitive sector. While Meta has the infrastructure and resources to compete, its rumored deal with constructing a foundational layer could mark a singular path from other competitors creating their very own robots.

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PERPLEXITY

🧠 Perplexity launches freemium Deep Research feature

The Rundown: Perplexity just launched its own Deep Research tool, an AI-powered research agent designed to offer in-depth reports in minutes — directly competing with similar (and identically named) offerings from OpenAI and Google.

The main points:

• Deep Research autonomously conducts dozens of searches, reads a whole bunch of sources, and synthesizes findings right into a structured report in 2-4 minutes.

• The tool excelled on Humanity’s Last Exam, scoring 21.1%, surpassing Gemini Pondering (6.2%) and Grok-2 (3.8%) — but falling in need of OpenAI’s 26.6%.

• Unlike OpenAI’s current $200/month paywall on its Deep Research, Perplexity’s tool is free (5 per day) for casual users, with Pro users getting more usage.

• Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas threw a jab at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X, saying he ‘mogged’ him with the corporate’s latest release.

Why it matters: The time it takes to go from premium features to free alternatives continues to get shorter, with Perplexity undercutting OpenAI directly (though early reviews have been mixed). But with AI leaders all pushing these tools, the query is not if AI will reshape research workflows — it’s how soon it would develop into the norm.

AI TRAINING

📝 Find out how to develop data-driven content strategies

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn the way to use Perplexity with DeepSeek to discover high-potential content opportunities and optimize your content strategy based on market gaps and audience demand.

Step-by-step: 

1. Head to Perplexity, toggle the Pro option, and choose Reasoning with R1 (5 free searches for brand spanking new users).

2. Ask it to investigate content gaps and trending topics in your field of interest.

3. Request to research audience preferences and successful formats.

4. Create your 30-day content strategy by asking for an actionable plan.  

Pro tip: Before running your evaluation, gather your current content performance metrics to match against Perplexity’s recommendations. The Rundown University members can access the highest prompts here.

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NBA

🏀 NBA showcases AI and robotics at 2025 All-Star Weekend

The Rundown: The NBA showed off several recent AI and robotics innovations being implemented for teams just like the Golden State Warriors as a part of its 2025 All-Star Technology Summit, including robots for rebounding, coaching, wellness, and more.

The main points:

• A.B.E. (Automated Basketball Engine) rebounds and passes during shooting practice, with Stephen Curry already incorporating it into his training routine.

• M.I.M.I.C. robots run offensive and defensive plays under a coach’s direction, providing consistent practice that may execute opponent’s formations.

• K.I.T. (Kinematic Interface Tool) focuses on player wellbeing, offering companionship and motivation within the locker room and through workouts.

• B.E.B.E. (Bot-Enhanced Basics & Equipment) helps organize equipment and repetitive tasks like inflating basketballs.

Why it matters: The robotics revolution has come to skilled sports, with the NBA providing an interesting look into the potential for specialised robots that could make major impacts for professional teams in search of any edge possible. While seeing these robots in motion remains to be jarring for now, it won’t be long before the tech is completely in all places.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🎬 Animate Anyone 2 – Alibaba’s open-source character animation model

• 💻 OmniParser V2 – Turn any LLM right into a Computer Use Agent

• 👩🏻‍💻 UI2Code – Immediately convert UI designs into production-ready frontend code

• 🤖 SAP Joule Agents – Business process-driven AI automation

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🏗️ Anyscale – Software Engineer, Infrastructure

• 🏅 Findem – Senior Customer Support Lead

• 🎨 OpenAI – Content Designer

• 🔬 Dataiku – Sales Engineer

📰 All the things else in AI today

Elon Musk revealed that xAI’s Grok 3 can be released later tonight, calling it ‘the neatest AI on Earth.’

OpenAI released a new edition of its 4o model, bringing upgraded performance in creative writing, coding, instruction following, and more.

Robotics startup Figure AI is reportedly discussing a brand new $1.5B funding round that will vault the corporate’s valuation to a whopping $39.5B.

Google rolled out recent memory upgrades to Gemini Advanced, allowing the model to recollect and reference past chats in its responses.

Apple is reportedly planning to bring Apple Intelligence features to its Vision Pro headsets in April, including features like Writing Tools, Genmoji, and Image Playground.

OpenAI’s board of directors unanimously voted to reject Elon Musk’s 97.4B offer to buy the corporate, saying it was “not in the most effective interests of OAI’s mission.”

COMMUNITY

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team