Physical Intelligence rents out its robot “brain”, but clients must hand over their data

The service works as follows. The client sends data from its own robots, and PI fine-tunes the model on its servers. The client then uses the model remotely and tests it on its own machine. Based on the failures, it chooses which data to collect for the next session.

PI has not yet published a price, according to Jiabin (家斌), an entrepreneur based in Singapore. Access to the beta requires an application, in which applicants must explain what they plan to do with it.

Not everyone is convinced. Gashero, an experienced engineer in the field, points out that the client must hand its own training data to PI. For a robot maker, that data is often among its most valuable assets.

PI is not alone in this space. Just after its announcement, Dream-1, a San Francisco team made up largely of former Nvidia staff, unveiled its first model, also offered through an API.