Google DeepMind Is Building a New Cambridge-Area Robotics Lab, Aaron Saunders Says

Key Takeaways

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• Aaron Saunders says Google DeepMind is creating a new Cambridge-area lab for its growing robotics hardware team.
• The announcement follows his move from Boston Dynamics to DeepMind roughly a year ago.
• Saunders invited machinists, engineers and researchers to get in touch, but did not disclose the facility’s size, budget or exact location.
• His reference to more news in 2027 does not specify a lab opening date or product launch.

Google DeepMind is building a new robotics lab in the Cambridge area to house a hardware team developed over the past year, according to Aaron Saunders, the former Boston Dynamics chief technology officer who joined the AI company in 2025.

In a LinkedIn announcement, Saunders posted that the team is continuing to recruit machinists, engineers and researchers, with more news to come in 2027.

A place for the hardware team

“We’re building a new Google DeepMind robotics lab in the Cambridge area!” Saunders wrote. He said the team has been developing since he joined a year ago and that the new facility will house that effort.

The announcement points to a further investment in the physical infrastructure behind DeepMind’s robotics research. It is also a recruitment message: Saunders called for people interested in bringing AGI into the physical world to contact him.

The regional context points, of course, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. An earlier recruitment post from DeepMind’s Sally Jesmonth explicitly placed a hardware-focused role working with Saunders in Cambridge, MA.

The new lab will sit within the wider Boston-area robotics community: MIT is based in Cambridge, while Saunders’ former employer, Boston Dynamics, is headquartered in nearby Waltham. That proximity places the new team near both academic research and experienced robotics engineers.

Following Saunders’ move from Boston Dynamics

As we reported when DeepMind hired Saunders as vice president of hardware engineering, he brought more than two decades of experience at Boston Dynamics, spanning machines including BigDog, Spot and Atlas.

That appointment connected DeepMind’s ambitions for general-purpose robot intelligence with experience developing the machines it must control. A dedicated lab gives the growing hardware team a place to build and test those systems alongside the broader AI research effort.

The expansion also comes as rival OpenAI pursues its own robotics hardware. As we recently reported, Sam Altman said OpenAI would “definitely do a humanoid,” alongside other robot form factors. The two AI labs’ hardware efforts add a physical dimension to their competition, although Saunders’ announcement does not identify a new DeepMind robot.

Saunders closed his post by asking followers to stay tuned for more later next year.

Source: Aaron Saunders’ LinkedIn post. Saunders’ profile.