Humanoid robotics
What AI runs humanoid robots?
No single AI runs humanoid robots; each maker runs its own brain. On DEPLOY's record, most humanoids run a captive AI built in-house by the robot's own maker: Figure's Helix, 1X's Redwood, UBTech's BrainNet, Tesla's FSD-Bot. A few are licensed across makers: NVIDIA's open GR00T runs robots from Hexagon and Agility. The full catalog is below, each brain dated and sourced.
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There is no one AI that runs humanoid robots, and DEPLOY does not name a winner. What we can do is show the record. On DEPLOY's registry, humanoids are run by a set of distinct AI brains, most of them a vision-language-action model or a world model that turns what the robot sees and hears into motion.
The important pattern is who builds the brain. Most humanoid AI today is captive: the robot's own maker builds it in-house and does not license it, so Figure runs Helix, 1X runs Redwood, UBTech runs BrainNet, Unitree runs UnifoLM, and Tesla runs an FSD-derived stack. A smaller set is licensed across makers: NVIDIA's open GR00T foundation model runs robots from Hexagon and Agility, and xAI's Grok supplies the reasoning layer for Tesla's Optimus.
The catalog below lists every humanoid brain on the record, what it is, who builds it, whether it is open, and which humanoids it runs, each dated and sourced or left honestly blank where the record holds nothing.
- 17
- AI brains on record
- 17
- companies build them
- 27
- humanoid models covered
- 3
- open-source
Two patterns: captive vs licensed
The question that actually separates humanoid AI is not which model is best, it is who builds the brain. Most makers run their own, in-house and unlicensed. A few brains are licensed across companies, which is where a single AI can run more than one maker’s robot.
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Most humanoid AI on DEPLOY's record is captive: the robot's own maker builds the brain and does not license it to others, so the brain's roadmap is inseparable from the hardware. Figure runs Helix, 1X runs Redwood, UBTech runs BrainNet, and Unitree runs UnifoLM.
2 of 17
A smaller set of brains runs humanoids built by a different company than the one that develops the brain: GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T) (Hexagon, Agility Robotics); Grok (xAI) (Tesla). These are the third-party or foundation-model channels, where one AI can run more than one maker's robot.
Every AI that runs a humanoid on the record
Each brain DEPLOY tracks that powers at least one published humanoid model, with who builds it, what kind of AI it is, whether it is open, and the humanoids it runs. Ordered by how many humanoids each runs, one lens, not a ranking. For the deeper record on any one brain see its brain registry page.
| AI system (brain) | Builder | Type | Access | Humanoids it runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genie Operator-1 (GO-1) | AgiBot | Foundation model | Closed | AgiBot Yuanzheng A2, AgiBot Lingxi X2, AgiBot G2, AgiBot A2, AgiBot A2-W |
| UnifoLM | Unitree Robotics | World model | Open | Unitree G1, Unitree R1, Unitree H1, Unitree H2, Unitree H2 Plus |
| UBTech BrainNet (Thinker) | UBTech Robotics | Foundation model | Closed | Walker S2, Walker S Lite, Walker S1 |
How we know this
Every row in the catalog comes from a dated, sourced Brain record in the DEPLOY registry, joined to the humanoid models it powers and the company that builds it. Each brain carries its own sources; here is a deduped sample of the receipts behind the catalog.
The captive vs licensed split is DEPLOY's brain-provider-architecture framework; the in-house vs cross-company count here is derived from the records (a brain is counted cross-company when it powers a humanoid built by a company other than its own developer). Where the record holds no brain for a humanoid, the honest answer is absence, not a guess.
Common questions
What AI powers Figure's humanoid robots?
What AI does Tesla Optimus use?
Is there one AI model that runs all humanoid robots?
Which humanoid AI models are open-source?
What is a robot brain?
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