Physical Intelligence opens Pi API beta to fine-tune and host its robot models

What Physical Intelligence announced

Physical Intelligence, the company behind the open π0 and π0.5 robot models, announced a beta of its Pi API on 13 October 2026. The API gives outside companies access to its latest models for training and inference. Users upload their robot data, launch fine-tuning on compute and infrastructure that Physical Intelligence manages, and then run the fine-tuned models through a hosted gateway. The company says it can update the models underneath the API quickly.

Access is through a waitlist. The company's most recent model announcement before the API was π0.7, described in April 2026 as a steerable model with emergent capabilities, but the API post does not say whether π0.7 is the model it serves. The post also does not name the model version behind the API, list supported robots or give prices, latency figures or benchmark results.

Who has used it

The post shows work by early partners. Actor, based in Utah, runs an autonomous wheel loader that scoops material and loads a dump truck during a commercial deployment with no operator in the cab. Almond in San Francisco builds Axol, a two-armed robot; its team iterated with the Pi API for four days, and Axol now deburrs spacers used in its own assembly. Other partners listed include AgRobotics, Argon Robotics, Chef Robotics, CloudChef, Deft, Dream Machines, Formic Robotics, Foundry, Omakase, Ultra, Weave and Yondu.

Physical Intelligence says the deployments ran from Japan to Switzerland and across the United States, mostly with inference hosted in the cloud, and that some partners had to deal with network connectivity problems. That is a real constraint for robots that depend on a remote model to act.

What changed for robot makers

Until now a company that wanted to use Physical Intelligence models had two routes: run the open-source π0 or π0.5 weights itself, or partner with the company directly. The API adds a managed path in which data upload, training and serving are handled for the customer, much like the fine-tuning services that language model companies sell. NVIDIA's Cosmos Framework, announced eight days later, lists Pi0.5 among the models it can fine-tune and deploy. Figure, by contrast, trains its Helix model in-house.

What to watch next

The points to watch are pricing, the move from waitlist to general access, latency guarantees for cloud-hosted control, and whether on-premises inference becomes an option for sites with weak connectivity. Supported robot types beyond the partner examples are also not listed, so the first public documentation for the API will matter. More robot model stories are under Robotics & Physical AI.

Questions people ask

What is the Pi API?

A beta service from Physical Intelligence, announced on 13 October 2026, that lets robot makers upload data, fine-tune the company's latest model on managed compute and run it through a hosted gateway.

How much does the Pi API cost?

Pricing is not stated in the announcement. Access is through a waitlist.

Which companies have used the Pi API?

The post names Actor, Almond, AgRobotics, Chef Robotics, CloudChef, Formic Robotics, Ultra, Weave, Yondu and others.

Sources

1. Frontier Models for Every Robot: Announcing our API beta (Physical Intelligence, 13 Oct 2026)
2. Open Sourcing π0 (Physical Intelligence, 4 Feb 2025)
3. π0.7: a Steerable Model with Emergent Capabilities (Physical Intelligence, 16 Apr 2026)