Robotics crossed the demonstration threshold in Q1 2026. Humanoids moved from viral backflips and pilot-stage curiosity into production manufacturing floors, autonomous logistics networks, and profitable unit sales—while foundation-model architectures began decoupling robot capability from hardware iteration speed. [[c:e176de0e-e3e8-4c73-bcdc-29cf7b34a533|Physical Intelligence]] collapsed training time from months to fifteen minutes with RL Tokens and Multi-Scale Memory, entering $1B fundraising talks at $11B valuation. [[c:b6f6479f-2285-4b84-a423-af8ea4cfc72d|Figure]] 03 claimed human-parity warehouse throughput and earned a White House stage. [[c:a2c732a5-a0fb-486d-ab67-8ceeb82927ec|Agility]]'s Digit entered precision auto-parts manufacturing at Schaeffler, not just tote-handling. [[c:10593968-4851-458b-af54-a95aa4aafab7|Unitree]] filed a profitable $580M IPO with humanoid revenue outpacing quadrupeds. The quarter validated that repeatability and throughput—not spectacle—now define competitive advantage. Foundation-model control planes, not hardware iteration cycles, set the ceiling for autonomy. The read: 2026 is the last window to lock category leadership before commoditizatio…