Meta has formed a team to develop humanoid robots and will invest heavily in this

Meta✴ announced to employees on Friday the creation of a new team that will focus on developing humanoid robots that can act like people and help consumers with various tasks. Bloomberg previously reported on the company’s plans to develop this area and allocate significant investments into the development.

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The new team will be led by Marc Whitten, who stepped down as CEO of General Motors’ self-driving vehicle division Cruise earlier this month and previously held senior positions at Unity Software and Amazon.com.

Meta✴ believes that while robotics companies have made some progress in the hardware for humanoid robots, Meta✴’s advances in AI and processing data collected from augmented and virtual reality devices could accelerate progress in the nascent industry. Meta✴ believes that current humanoid robots are still not functional enough to perform basic household chores, such as folding clothes, fetching a glass of water, or placing dishes on a shelf to wash — all of which would interest consumers in this category.

Andrew Bosworth, Meta✴’s chief technology officer, said in a memo that the technology created by Reality Labs and the company’s AI team complements existing advances needed for robotics. “We believe that expanding our portfolio to invest in this area will only increase the value of Meta✴ AI and our mixed and augmented reality programs,” he added.

Whitten will report directly to Bosworth, whose team will include about 100 people, the source said. The software, sensors, and computing packages Meta✴ is already developing for its devices could also be used in humanoid robots, one of the people involved in the project said. Meta✴ plans to spend $65 billion this year on related products, including AI infrastructure and a new robotics business.

Meta✴ aims to do for the phone industry what Google’s Android OS and Qualcomm’s chips did for the phone industry, laying the groundwork for the rest of the market. The company is positioning its project as a platform for developing robots, and hopes to make Llama’s AI models the foundation for robotics developers around the world, one of the people said. Meta✴ will also develop tools to ensure robots are safe to use.

Meta✴ believes it will be a couple of years before humanoid robots are widely available, and it could be years before the company’s platform supports third-party products. But this will be a major focus for Meta✴ and the tech industry, Bloomberg’s source said.