Shares of Fanuc Corp (TYO:6954) rallied sharply on Thursday, rising as much as 15.6% to a record intraday level of 8,880.0 yen by 06:29 GMT, after the company disclosed a partnership with Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) to develop industrial robot systems leveraging physical artificial intelligence.
Under the arrangement, Fanuc will integrate Google Cloud technologies - including the Gemini Enterprise generative AI model - into industrial robot systems designed to interpret human instructions, identify objects, and autonomously coordinate multiple robots. The collaboration extends to Google's robotics unit, Intrinsic, with Fanuc preparing to make its robots fully compatible with Intrinsic's enterprise software platform and the Flowstate development environment.
Fanuc said it has already shipped more than 1,000 robots equipped with physical AI since first unveiling the technology at an international robotics exhibition last December, and that demand for these systems is accelerating. The company also announced plans to demonstrate an "AI agent system for industrial robots" later this month, in which both collaborative and non-collaborative robots will operate together using natural language instructions.
The planned integration of cloud-based generative AI, enterprise robotics software, and physical AI-enabled hardware marks a significant step in Fanuc's product roadmap. By combining Google Cloud's AI capabilities with Intrinsic's enterprise-grade development and deployment tools, Fanuc aims to extend robot functionality to higher-level tasks such as instruction parsing, object recognition, and multi-robot coordination - all within a commercial software environment.
Market reaction was immediate: Fanuc's Tokyo-listed shares reached the reported record high during Asian trading hours following the announcement. The company framed the collaboration as an extension of work already underway, pointing to the more than 1,000 physical AI-equipped robots it has shipped and the reported uptick in demand since the technology's public introduction.
What to watch next
- Fanuc's demonstration later this month of an AI agent system that lets robots act on natural language instructions.
- Progress on full compatibility between Fanuc robots and Intrinsic's enterprise software and Flowstate development environment.
- Traction in orders and deployments for robots equipped with physical AI, given the company's comment that demand is accelerating.