Research labs
Microsoft Research - Physical AI Research
United States
A cross-lab initiative spanning Redmond, Cambridge (UK), New York and Montreal rather than a single dedicated lab; Magma unifies digital UI agents and physical robot manipulation.
AffiliationMicrosoft Corporation
CountryUS
TypeCorporate
Research areasVLA, tactile manipulation, multimodal agents, benchmarks
Flagship contributionAnnounced Rho-Alpha, its first robotics model derived from the Phi vision-language lineage, integrating tactile perception and tested on bimanual industrial and humanoid platforms.
Key peopleAshley Llorens (CVP et Managing Director, Microsoft Research Accelerator)
Open outputsMagma : code et poids ouverts (GitHub microsoft/Magma, Hugging Face microsoft/Magma-8B) ; Rho-Alpha en accès anticipé uniquement au moment de la vérification.
Sources : Microsoft Research (2026-01)The Robot Report (2026-01)Microsoft Research (2025-02)
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