Amazon has announced the launch of the Physical AI Fellowship, a virtual program developed in collaboration with AWS Startups, NVIDIA Inception, and MassRobotics. The initiative aims to assist robotics startups in developing, refining, and scaling physical AI solutions.
According to MassRobotics, the fellowship is designed to accelerate the robotics industry by leveraging AWS's expertise in cloud-based AI, NVIDIA's accelerated computing stack, and MassRobotics' ecosystem of robotics innovation. The program emphasizes "physical AI," which seeks to transition intelligent machines from research labs into real-world applications across various industries. MassRobotics noted that this initiative aligns with the global push to integrate automation into sectors where productivity, safety, and efficiency gains are essential.
The fellowship offers substantial technical and financial resources. Each startup receives $200,000 in AWS credits, embedded engineering support from AWS’s Generative AI Innovation Center, and preferred pricing through the NVIDIA Inception program. MassRobotics announced that startups also gain access to NVIDIA’s Isaac robotics platform, Cosmos simulation tools, and specialized training via the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute. These resources aim to help companies progress from prototypes to enterprise-scale deployments.
The inaugural Fall 2025 cohort includes eight startups: Bedrock Robotics, Blue Water Autonomy, Diligent Robotics, Generalist AI, RobCo, Tutor Intelligence, Wandercraft, and Zordi. According to Robotics and Automation News, these companies span diverse industries such as healthcare and logistics to agriculture and industrial automation. This cohort underscores the fellowship's strategy of targeting broad applications of physical AI rather than concentrating on a single sector.
Amazon was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is a global technology company with operations across e-commerce, logistics, consumer devices, entertainment, and artificial intelligence. Its cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is recognized as the world's leading provider of cloud infrastructure services for enterprises, startups, and governments worldwide. According to Amazon’s official About page, AWS specializes in scalable and secure solutions for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and high-performance computing.