Nebius Physical AI Awards

The Nebius Physical AI Awards recognizes the rising startups that will define the next generation of intelligent machines across five pillars of the Physical AI ecosystem.

Apply for the 2026 program for a chance to receive a cloud compute grant from Nebius and access the exclusive Physical AI Summit in San Francisco this November.

Applications are open from July 15 to September 30, 2026.

Apply now Get program updates

Why apply

$150,000

In high-performance compute grants for each category winner to accelerate your startup.

Attend the Summit

Finalists will exhibit at the 2026 Nebius Physical AI Summit in San Francisco.

Media exposure

Winners are amplified through Nebius press and promotion channels.

Executive mentorship

A 1:1 session with a Nebius C-level leader on product and go-to-market.

Trophies and SWAG

Take home a stunning memento and some Nebius swag.

2026 Award Categories

Apply to the category that best fits your product. Companies with multiple products may apply to additional categories.

Physical AI Models

Physical AI models powering perception, reasoning, and action, including VLA models, VLMs, world models, and reinforcement learning.

Perception & Spatial Intelligence

The sensing and interpretation stack that helps machines see and navigate. Includes computer vision, SLAM, sensor fusion, and scene understanding.

Simulation & Synthetic Data

The environments and data engines that systems learn from before real-world deployment, including physics-based simulation, digital twins, and sim-to-real transfer.

Systems & Deployment

The platforms bringing Physical AI into commercial use, including humanoids, industrial robots, AMRs, and warehouse automation.

Software, Tooling & Orchestration

The developer infrastructure for building and scaling intelligent machines, including middleware, MLOps, benchmarking, fleet management, and deployment tooling.

Program timeline

July 15, 2026

Applications open

September 30, 2026

Applications close

October 13, 2026

Finalists announced

November 3, 2026

Summit and award ceremony

2025 Program recap

254

applications

finalists

$1.5M+

awarded in Nebius compute grants

See 2025’s winning startups

Building Physical AI? Apply by September 30

Applications for the 2026 program are now open. Apply now or subscribe for updates on the 2026 Physical AI Awards and Summit.

Apply now Get program updates

FAQ

Applications for the 2026 program open July 15th. Click “Apply for 2026” to register your interest.

Yes. Each application should focus on a single product or service that your startup provides. During the application you’ll select the specific category you’re nominating that product for.

You may submit the same product for multiple categories, or multiple products for the same category. While there is no limit to the number of applications you can submit, we recommend focusing on your strongest cases.

Applications are open to Physical AI founders that meet the following criteria:

• Minimum $1M raised

• Pre-seed through Series B encouraged

• Core product must have a clear Physical AI use case

• Nominated product must align with at least one of the five award categories

• Registered legal entity

• Live public website

• Demonstrable MVP in active use or testing

Companies beyond Series C are not eligible to compete but may be considered for a recognition category or invited as judges.

View the full Terms & Conditions for more details.

All applications are screened by our in-house experts for overall quality and completeness. Incomplete or unclear applications may be filtered out.

A panel of judges will review the remaining applications, scoring each on depth of innovation, breadth of implementation, demonstrated market potential, and the realized impact of the technology to determine the finalists for each category.

Finalists will be voted on by a jury to determine the winners for each category.