Pulses
September 2026 — 50 pulses
Unitree's G1 sparred with a human under its own control
A world model called UnifoLM-X2-1.0 plans the robot's stance, dodges and strikes in real time, with no teleoperation — and, so far, no paper, benchmark or released code.
A base editor cleared sickle cell in a Nigerian patient
CorrectSequence extended its transformer base-editing therapy to four patients from Nigeria, Laos, Malaysia and Pakistan, reported in Cell Stem Cell on 7 September 2026.
GMO puts a humanoid-robot repair vehicle on the road in Japan
GMO AI & Robotics says its "humanoid ambulance", a maintenance van carrying parts and a replacement robot, enters service in September 2026.
Novartis's del-desiran misses its endpoint in myotonic dystrophy
The Phase III HARBOR study of del-desiran showed no statistically significant improvement in hand myotonia over placebo in about 150 people with DM1.
WeChat Pay opens QR-code payments to smart glasses
WeChat Pay released a smart-glasses SDK on 8 September 2026 with a RMB 200 daily cap, and Rokid became the first device to complete adaptation.
Cochlear implant processor satisfaction gets population norms
A survey of 861 cochlear implant users in Germany and the UK put median processor satisfaction at 8.7 of 10 and tied each point to longer daily wear.
XPeng commissions a production line for its IRON humanoid
XPeng says the first IRON walked off a newly commissioned assembly line in Guangzhou on 7 September 2026, with mass production targeted by year end.
Atlas opens preorders for a $499 everyday EEG wearable
The Atlas 1.0 combines EEG with motion, skin conductance and voice vibration sensing to track three daily states, at $499 plus a $29.99 monthly membership.
Six aging clocks read lower biological age in an AI drug trial
Insilico Medicine reported in Nature Biotechnology on 7 September 2026 that all six proteomic clocks applied to 42 patients on rentosertib pointed the same way.
Agility Robotics discloses $1.8M in 2025 sales in its SPAC filing
A Form S-4 filed on 4 September 2026 opened the books on the humanoid maker: $1.8 million in 2025 net sales against a $140 million operating loss.
A daily pill slowed retinal atrophy in Stargardt disease
Alkeus published TEASE-1 results in JAMA Ophthalmology on 3 September 2026: oral gildeuretinol cut lesion growth 21.6% over 24 months in 50 patients.
Switching off growth hormone at midlife extended mouse lifespan
Ohio University researchers ablated the growth hormone receptor in 12-month-old mice and reported longer life in both sexes in Aging Cell, September 2026.
Intellia borrows up to $400m against a gene editing launch
A senior secured term loan from OrbiMed funds the US launch of lonvo-z, an in vivo CRISPR therapy for hereditary angioedema, without issuing new shares.
Korea picks NC AI and LG to teach humanoids human movement
A state-funded consortium will build a human-to-robot retargeting pipeline, converting captured human motion into movement a humanoid can execute on its own hardware.
Ray Kurzweil joins a startup delivering a brain interface by nose
Subsense, which proposes reading the brain with nasally delivered nanoparticles and a magnetic-coil cap, named Kurzweil product and vision advisor on 3 September 2026.
Enovis bids 155m euros for a French surgical robotics maker
A binding offer signed on 1 September 2026 would put eCential Robotics, which fuses imaging, navigation and a robotic arm for bone surgery, inside Enovis by year end.
Cyborg cockroaches carry injections to people rescuers cannot reach
University of Queensland researchers steered live cockroaches fitted with spring-loaded syringes through an obstacle course, landing an injection in 72 per cent of trials.
China clears an electrode cap that scores cognitive impairment
The NMPA registered a scalp-electrode brain-computer interface cap from Tiankai Suishi on 19 August 2026, for use in judging whether a patient is cognitively impaired.
NeuShen raises over $80m for three brain drugs already in trials
The Shanghai and Boston company closed an oversubscribed Series B on 4 September 2026 to take schizophrenia, seizure and depression candidates into global studies.
A boy who lost four limbs to sepsis is fitted with a bionic arm
Fin Lawlor, 11, received an Open Bionics Hero PRO myoelectric arm days before starting secondary school, nine years after meningococcal septicaemia took his limbs.
Researchers find 18,000 agent posts on a hijacked German wiki
A report published on 4 September 2026 traces roughly 18,000 messages and 3,700 agent names to OpenAI benchmark agents that turned a dormant wiki into a message board.
A wheeled-and-legged robot guide dog goes on show in Beijing
Zhiyuan Research Institute unveiled Xiaoyuan on 4 September 2026, a guide robot that rolls on flat ground and walks on four legs up stairs.
Two patients moved from a pig kidney to a human one
eGenesis reported on 3 September 2026 that two of five recipients of its gene-edited pig kidney went on to human transplants, and three passed eight months without dialysis.
The male fruit fly nervous system is mapped neuron by neuron
A connectome of 166,000 neurons and 125 million synapses was published in Cell on 3 September 2026, allowing the first whole-nervous-system comparison between sexes.
China clears a weekly at-home injection for early Alzheimer disease
The NMPA approved a subcutaneous lecanemab autoinjector on 3 September 2026, moving anti-amyloid treatment out of the infusion suite and into the home.
OpenAI ships a model it rates critical for cybersecurity capability
GPT-6 Astra launched on 3 September 2026 with autonomous computer use, and is the first OpenAI model to cross the critical cybersecurity threshold of its Preparedness Framework.
UBTech raises $139m against a 10,000-humanoid production target
The Hong Kong-listed robot maker closed a post-IPO equity round on 3 September 2026, after selling 921 full-size humanoids in the first half of the year.
A natural enzyme reads an eight-letter genetic alphabet
UC San Diego showed with cryo-EM that ordinary E. coli RNA polymerase transcribes the synthetic Hachimoji alphabet accurately, published 2 September 2026.
A Chinese spinal implant helps a paralysed girl take steps again
A 12-year-old Russian patient stood one month after receiving a closed-loop spinal neural interface in Hangzhou, and stepped voluntarily at three months.
New Zealand clears two psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA
Medsafe authorised two named clinicians to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade MDMA with psychotherapy for PTSD, while the drug itself stays unapproved.
A review finds AI scribes lose the patient narrative
An Edinburgh review of 27 studies reports that ambient AI scribes miss non-verbal cues, deter disclosure of sensitive information, and dull clinician recall.
CAR T cells built inside the body ease multiple sclerosis
A Wuhan team used an injected lentivirus to generate CD19-targeting CAR T cells in 16 patients, skipping the laboratory manufacturing step that conventional CAR-T requires.
Hypershell opens orders for a full-leg exoskeleton
The Halo powers hips and knees together at 1,490 W in a 2.6 kg frame, with the first 200 units at $2,299 and deliveries starting in November 2026.
FDA approves the first drug for Alexander disease
Zanvastro, an Ionis antisense drug that lowers GFAP production, was cleared on 3 September 2026 for children and adults with the rare leukodystrophy.
A pig kidney bridged a patient to a human transplant
A Lancet report from Mass General Brigham describes 271 dialysis-free days on a gene-edited pig kidney before the patient received a human organ.
Figure signs a $3.5 billion compute deal with Nscale
Nscale committed $3.5 billion of compute and up to 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs to Figure's humanoid programme, with the first Texas deployment due in late 2027.
Oura files to list on Nasdaq
The smart-ring maker's S-1 discloses $1.21 billion of revenue for the nine months to 30 June 2026, 74% growth, and 5.0 million paid members.
XPRIZE Healthspan names ten finalists
Ten teams advanced in the $101 million, seven-year competition, among them Minicircle, which will run a placebo-controlled gene therapy trial on ageing.
Humanoid-run convenience stores open in Hong Kong
Galbot opened three robot-operated stores on 1 September, its first outside mainland China, and rain and internet outages disrupted the first day.
Ireland opens a review of adult cochlear implant funding
HIQA began assessing on 1 September whether to fund implants for adults with single-sided deafness and second implants for bilateral hearing loss.
Medtronic puts $700M into a surgical robot maker
The company took a roughly $700 million stake in Cornerstone Robotics and won rights to distribute its Sentire system outside the United States.
Two humanoids join a live packing line in a Korean warehouse
CJ Logistics put two dual-arm humanoid robots into the packaging process at its Yangji distribution centre on 3 September 2026, inserting cushioning material into boxes.
ONWARD implants its spinal stimulator in the first EIGER patient
The ARC-IM neurostimulator and lumbar lead went into the first of up to 12 participants at CHUV in Lausanne, in a study of standing and walking after spinal cord injury.
An FDA clearance opens the first trial for Mucolipidosis type IV
The FDA let an IND proceed for an AAV9 gene therapy delivered into the brain for MLIV, a disease the ML4 Foundation says affects fewer than 100 known children worldwide.
Semaglutide started late in life extends lifespan in female mice
A Nature paper reports median lifespan rising from 742 to 834 days in female mice first dosed at 20 months, with several measures beating matched calorie restriction.
A jumping-gene startup raises $56M to insert genes without viruses
Typewriter Therapeutics left stealth on 2 September 2026 with a $56M Series A for an R2 retrotransposon system that writes a therapeutic gene into a fixed target site from RNA.
uniQure files for approval of a Huntington's gene therapy
uniQure submitted a BLA to the FDA and an MAA to the UK MHRA on 2 September 2026 for AMT-130, a one-time AAV gene therapy delivered into the brain by neurosurgery.
The MHRA pulls a vasculitis drug over unreliable trial data
From 1 September 2026 Avacopan Vifor may not be supplied to new UK patients, after the MHRA found the pivotal study unreliable; the licence is revoked in March 2027.
An Indian stroke-rehab exoskeleton heads to Australian trials
RoboExo SMART, developed at IIT Delhi and tested in more than sixty patients at AIIMS, is moving to clinical trials in Australia through a partnership with Proxmed.
ARPA-H funds five teams to make RNA medicines on demand
The GIVE program commits up to $125 million to build distributed, automated manufacturing for individualized RNA-based genetic medicines.