On 22 and 23 July in San Francisco, AMD brought its partners together for Advancing AI 2026, the event where the semiconductor giant shows where artificial intelligence is heading. This year, a substantial part of the answer was physical: humanoids, quadrupeds, industrial robots. “Two days of innovation in physical AI” was how AMD described it.
In the middle of that global showcase was Gene01, Generative Bionics’ humanoid robot, making its first live appearance in the United States. For two days it walked around the stand, greeted visitors and talked with them, reacting to touch and proximity thanks to the sensorised skin that covers its entire body. Among those who stopped by the stand was Lisa Su, CEO of AMD: out of hundreds of exhibitors, her tour of the event took in five stands. One of them belonged to the Genoese start-up.
Generative Bionics is the story of research that became a business. Led by Daniele Pucci, it grew out of the humanoid robotics work of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, of which it is a spin-off. In December 2025 it closed a €70 million seed round – one of the largest ever in Italy – with investors including CDP Venture Capital, AMD Ventures, Duferco, Eni Next, RoboIT and Tether. Six months after the announcement, Gene01 was a fully functional humanoid platform, designed for industrial work alongside people: its first application agreement, with Fincantieri, will take it into welding operations in shipyards.
The link with Genoa and its scientific community is proudly and publicly claimed. Sharing the post about the debut, Giorgio Metta, Scientific Director of IIT, wrote: “Not too bad, IIT-ers – because you have been, and always will be, part of the big family of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Keep it up and, as they used to say around here before humanoid robots existed: ad maiora semper!”
This is the path the science and technology park exists for: on the hill, IIT works on technologies for people, and from that research come companies able to attract international capital and to take the stage where the future of robotics is decided. “And this is only the beginning,” Generative Bionics writes at the end of its post. That holds for Gene01. And it holds for the hill where this story began.
Alcune note sulle scelte. La citazione di Metta inizia in inglese, quindi probabilmente il post originale era in inglese e l’articolo lo ha tradotto: se riesci a recuperarlo, conviene usare le sue parole esatte al posto della mia ritraduzione. Ho lasciato “Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia” in italiano perché è il nome ufficiale usato anche a livello internazionale, e “ad maiora semper” in latino, come nell’originale. “Tecnologie per l’uomo” l’ho reso con “technologies for people”; un’alternativa più tecnica è “human-centred technologies”.
