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Toyota contracts seven Agility humanoid robots for Canadian factory

After a year-long pilot project, Toyota’s Canadian manufacturing subsidiary has contracted seven humanoid robots to work in a plant building RAV4 SUVs under a robots-as-a-service deal.

“After evaluating a number of robots, we are excited to deploy Digit to improve the team member experience and further increase operational efficiency in our manufacturing facilities,” Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) President Tim Hollander said in a statement.

The Digit robot in question is built by Agility Robotics, a firm spun out of Oregon State University in 2015. Digit is intended to work in industrial environments without humans nearby, often bridging two automated production lines. In this case, the robots will be unloading totes full of auto parts from an automated warehouse tugger.

While seven robots doing manual drudgery may seem a small step compared to sizzle reels of metal humans doing backflips, actually deploying humanoid robots in real workplaces is rare and difficult. Demonstrating a capability in a lab is one thing, but integrating it into a company’s workflow — including maintenance and charging — isn’t easy. 

“When the tech companies spend real time in the field understanding the task that needs to be operated, the real workflows that happens…that’s when we will see a huge uptick in adoption,” Ram Devarajulu, a VP at Cambridge Consultants, said at the Humanoids Summit in late 2025. 

Agility is among the leaders in getting robots out of the lab, with Digits working in similar capacities for logistics providers like GXO, Schaeffler, and Amazon. The company has a proprietary cloud-based software package called Arc for users to manage fleets of their robots, and says AI will be vital in reducing deployment costs. 

“Cost of deployment … can be more than the price of the robot by a lot,” Pras Velagapudi, Agility’s CTO, said in an interview last year. “AI tools let us decrease that cost of deployment, decrease the amount of time getting the robot configured and getting it operating at a level of performance that they want.”

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TMMC and Agility will use this engagement as an opportunity to pioneer other use cases that relieve human workers of repetitive physical tasks and prioritize more valuable work. 

The company is also preparing a next-generation robot that will be safe to operate alongside human workers; current humanoid robots that are strong enough to lift heavy loads are still considered too unreliable to operate autonomously around people.

Competitor Figure AI tested its Figure 02 robots in a BMW factory for 10 months last year, which the company said unloaded 90,000 parts. Other companies deploying humanoids in pilot programs include Apptronic, Unitree, Tesla, Boston Dynamics, 1X Technology, and Reflex Robotics. 

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SoftBank to spend an eye-popping $33B to build huge US gas power plant

SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy is expected to build a massive 9.2 gigawatt natural gas-fired power plant on the Ohio-Kentucky border, according to a report from Bloomberg. If completed, it would be the largest power plant in the U.S., capable of powering around 7.5 million homes.

With a price tag of $33 billion, the project would be more expensive than recent natural gas-fired power plants, which have skyrocketed in cost, Bloomberg notes. It’s unclear who will ultimately foot the bill, though traditionally rate-payers have shouldered the burden for new generating capacity.

The Japanese investor is a partner in the Stargate project with OpenAI. SB Energy did not say whether the new power plant would feed directly into the grid or if it would power data centers. OpenAI and SoftBank are in the process of building a “proof of concept” data center at GM’s former Lordstown automotive assembly plant.

A power plant of this size is likely to take years, perhaps a decade, to complete even before taking into account the shortage of natural gas turbines. If completed, the project could emit around 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to our calculations based on public, energy-use metrics. When including methane leaks from the natural gas supply chain, the climate impact could be even bigger. 

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Reddit is testing a new AI search feature for shopping

Reddit announced on Thursday that it’s testing a new AI search tool that takes community recommendations and matches them with products from some of the company’s shopping and advertising partners.

A small group of users in the U.S. will start to see search results that include interactive product carousels with pricing, images, and direct where-to-buy links.

The announcement reflects Reddit’s broader push to combine its community-driven platform with e-commerce capabilities. The move comes as Reddit launched its first shoppable ad product last year, called Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), which display personalized product recommendations to users based on their interests.

Now, when users who are part of the test search for something like “best noise-canceling headphones” or “electronic gift ideas for a college student,” they will see a carousel of related products at the bottom of the results.

This carousel will feature products directly mentioned by users from conversations on related posts and comments. If users tap on the product, they can view more details and then be directed to the retailer to purchase the item.

“This feature surfaces top-recommended products directly from discussions, giving redditors instant information about any product,” the company wrote in a blog post. “This test is designed to make Reddit easier to navigate while keeping community perspectives at the center of the experience. We’ll continue learning from how people use this new feature and refine the experience over time.”

While platforms like TikTok and Instagram have long integrated shopping features, Reddit is now looking to follow suit. Of course, Reddit isn’t the only tech platform that recently started exploring AI-driven shopping, as OpenAI’s ChatGPT rolled out an “Instant Checkout” feature last September that lets users make Etsy and Shopify purchases within conversations.

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Thursday’s announcement comes after Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said during the company’s earnings release last week that the platform’s AI search engine could be the next big opportunity for its business, not just in terms of product, but also as a revenue driver.

Huffman also noted that weekly active users for search grew 30% over the past year, increasing from 60 million to 80 million, while weekly active users for the AI-powered Reddit Answers feature rose from 1 million in the first quarter of 2025 to 15 million by the fourth quarter.

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As browser wars heat up, Chrome adds new productivity features

As AI companies and startups push their way into the web browser market, the world’s biggest browser, Google Chrome, is rolling out a handful of new features. The company on Thursday announced the official launch of a trio of options, including Split View, PDF annotations, and a Save to Google Drive feature, designed to more deeply integrate Chrome with one of Google’s other online services.

While these particular additions aren’t focused on AI, Google already integrated its Gemini AI assistant into Chrome. The move was made in response to the increased competition from AI providers like OpenAI and Perplexity, which are dabbling in agentic browsers. These so-called browser wars have pushed Google to be less stagnant in terms of developing and releasing more consumer-facing features.

With Split View, multitasking in Chrome has become easier as the feature puts two pages side-by-side in the same tab. This lets you work across two web pages or watch a video while taking notes, among other things. To use the feature, you’ll drag a tab to the left or right edge of the browser window or right-click a link and select “Open Link in Split View.” The tabs will automatically snap into place. When no longer needed, you can exit the Split View layout via an option found via a right-click.

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Another practical addition is the PDF annotations feature, which lets you add notes to a PDF or highlight its text from the browser. This means you don’t have to download the PDF and then open it in another application to work with its content. The option, a long time coming, could make it much simpler to do basic PDF tasks, like digitally signing a document, filling out a form, making notes within a file or personal document, and more.

Image Credits:Google

Finally, the new Save to Google Drive feature will allow you to save any PDF directly to your Google Drive account, instead of your computer, where it may get lost. When using this feature, the saved files will appear in a Saved from Chrome folder in your Drive, making them easy to find.

Image Credits:Google

Today’s update follows the expansion of Gemini and other agentic features to Chromebook users last month. And soon, Chrome is poised to adopt another change that was first spearheaded by its competitors: support for vertical tabs. (Tech-savvy users can even enable that option now, in an experimental phase, by changing a flag.)

This reimagined way to organize open tabs was one of the flagship features in The Browser Company’s first alternative browser, Arc, and is now found in its AI browser, Dia. By adding this feature and the others, Google hopes to give Chrome users fewer reasons to switch.

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