Nebius and NVIDIA launch 2026 Physical AI Awards with $150K compute prizes
Nebius and NVIDIA announced the 2026 Physical AI Awards, a global competition offering five $150,000 compute credit prizes across five categories. Applications are open until October 25, 2026, with winners announced in mid-November. The prizes include Nebius compute credits, joint promotion from both companies, executive mentorship, and an exclusive dinner with industry leaders.
Key points
- Five $150K compute credit prizes awarded across Physical AI categories, applications close October 25, 2026
- Winners get Nebius/NVIDIA promotion, mentorship, and an executive dinner with industry leaders
- Judges include operators from Foxglove, Voxel51, and RoboForce, who evaluate innovation and real-world impact
The competition targets startups with a demonstrable Physical AI product, including models, perception systems, simulations, deployment tools, and robotics. Judges—selected by Nebius and NVIDIA—will evaluate entries on innovation, implementation, market potential, and real-world impact. The panel includes industry operators like Foxglove’s Adrian Macneil, Voxel51’s Brian Moore, and RoboForce’s Calvin Zhou, who previously won the 2025 edition. The 2025 cohort saw 254 applicants, with winners like RoboForce (Industrial Robotics) raising $52M and Gather AI (Vision AI) securing $40M in follow-on funding.
Nebius emphasizes the awards aim to support teams scaling fleet data, retraining pipelines, and sim-to-real deployment—critical challenges for Physical AI startups. The $150K credits convert to 521 hours on a 64-GPU H200 cluster or 61,200 GPU-hours at preemptible rates, depending on use case.
Nebius Opens 2026 Physical AI Awards: Five $150K Compute Prizes, Nine Judges, and an October 25 Deadline
MarkTechPost · 29 September 2026
Loading the full article…
This text was published by MarkTechPost and written by Asif Razzaq. It is reproduced here with attribution so you can read it in full; the rights remain with the publisher. Read it at the source ↗
Coverage and discussion
2sources- Nebius Opens 2026 Physical AI Awards: Five $150K Compute Credit PrizesPress · MarkTechPost ·
The headline, key points and digest above were generated by Digest AI's editorial model from the linked sources. Automated summaries can contain errors: the sources are the record. Spotted a mistake? Tell us. Published by Martin K., who runs Digest AI and handles corrections.
More in Robotics & Physical AI
All →- Point One Navigation’s FUSE 2026 event announces robotics platform built on GPS accuracy · 1 src
- China blocks SoftBank’s $5.375B ABB Robotics acquisition · 3 src
- ABB Robotics and NVIDIA launch physical AI education program at GTC Berlin · 1 src
- Physicl raises $10M seed to build realistic 3D sims for robot training · 2 src
- iQIYI reconstructs lost 1938 sci-fi film with NadouPro AI tools · 1 src
Comments
via GitHub Discussions