With operations across 50 countries, MagicLab is pairing new robot systems with a platform strategy aimed at wider commercial adoption
Updated
May 1, 2026 2:16 PM
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A standing yellow robotic arm. PHOTO: UNSPLASH
MagicLab Robotics is a Chinese startup that describes itself as an embodied AI company. At an event in Silicon Valley this week, it outlined its global ambitions and introduced new products designed for real-world use. The company said its international business now spans more than 50 countries and regions, with overseas markets accounting for 60% of total sales in 2025. That gives some indication of how quickly Chinese robotics firms are expanding beyond their home market.
At the centre of the announcement was MagicLab’s latest product line-up. It included Magic-Mix, described as a foundational world model for robots, the H01 dexterous robotic hand and its humanoid robot, MagicBot X1. In practical terms, the company is trying to build robots that can better understand their surroundings and perform physical tasks with greater precision. That is the core idea behind embodied AI, where intelligence is combined with movement and interaction in the real world rather than limited to software alone.
MagicLab says it develops both hardware and software internally. Its product range includes humanoid robots and four-legged machines, with systems designed for factories, commercial services and home use. The company also outlined where it sees demand emerging. It listed sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, security, public safety, education and household assistance.
That wide spread of target markets reflects a broader challenge in robotics. Building capable machines is only one part of the equation. The harder task is finding enough practical uses where customers are willing to pay for them.
MagicLab also used the summit to set out a long-term commercial goal. It projected a path toward US$14 billion in annual revenue by 2036 through wider adoption of embodied AI systems. It also announced what it calls the “Co-Create 1000 Initiative”, a plan to work with external developers and partner companies.
As part of that effort, the startup said it plans to invest US$1 billion over the next five years to build a developer ecosystem that would allow third parties to create new applications for its robots. The strategy mirrors what happened in smartphones and cloud software, where ecosystems often mattered as much as the original hardware. If robotics follows a similar path, companies that attract developers could gain an advantage over those selling machines alone.
For now, MagicLab’s announcement is less about immediate breakthroughs and more about positioning. The company is presenting itself not simply as a robot maker, but as a platform business seeking a role in the next phase of intelligent machines.
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Can SPhotonix’s optical memory technology protect data better than today’s storage?
Updated
January 8, 2026 6:32 PM
SPhotonix's 5D Memory Crystals™. PHOTO: SPHOTONIX
SPhotonix, a young deep-tech startup, is working on something unexpected for the data storage world: tiny, glass-like crystals that can hold enormous amounts of information for extremely long periods of time. The company works where light and data meet, using photonics—the science of shaping and guiding light—to build optical components and explore a new form of memory called “5D optical storage”.
It’s based on research that began more than twenty years ago, when Professor Peter Kazansky showed that a small crystal could preserve data—from the human genome to the entire Wikipedia—essentially forever.
Their new US$4.5 million pre-seed round, led by Creator Fund and XTX Ventures, is meant to turn that science into real products. And the timing aligns with a growing problem: the world is generating far more digital data than current storage systems can handle. Most of it isn’t needed every day, but it can’t be thrown away either. This long-term, rarely accessed cold data is piling up faster than existing storage infrastructure can manage and maintaining giant warehouses of servers just to keep it all alive is becoming expensive and environmentally unsustainable.
This is the problem SPhotonix is stepping in to solve. They want to store huge amounts of information in a stable format that doesn’t degrade, doesn’t need electricity to preserve data and doesn’t require constant swapping of hardware. Instead of racks of spinning drives, the idea is a durable optical crystal storage system that could last for generations.
The company’s underlying technology—called FemtoEtch™—uses ultrafast lasers to engrave microscopic patterns inside fused silica. These precisely etched structures can function as high-performance optical components for fields like aerospace, microscopy and semiconductor manufacturing. But the same ultra-controlled process can also encode information in five dimensions within the crystal, transforming the material into a compact, long-lasting archive capable of holding massive amounts of information in a very small footprint.
The new funding allows SPhotonix to expand its engineering team, grow its R&D facility in Switzerland and prepare the technology for real-world deployment. Investors say the opportunity is significant: global data generation has more than doubled in recent years and traditional storage systems—drives, disks, tapes—weren’t designed for the scale or longevity modern data demands.
While the company has been gaining attention in research circles (and even made an appearance in the latest Mission Impossible film), its next step is all about practical adoption. If the technology reaches commercial viability, it could offer an alternative to the energy-hungry, short-lived storage hardware that underpins much of today’s digital infrastructure.
As digital information continues to multiply, preserving it safely and sustainably is becoming one of the biggest challenges in modern computing. SPhotonix’s work points toward a future where long-lasting, low-maintenance optical data storage becomes a practical alternative to today’s fragile systems. It offers a more resilient way to preserve knowledge for the decades ahead.