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CoreWeave Named BattleBots AI Cloud Partner as Builders Simulate Fights Before the Arena

CoreWeave has been named BattleBots’ official AI cloud partner, as robot builders use simulation to test weapon designs and new materials before combat. BattleBots senior engineer Rob Bahr said AI could also drive autonomy and push the sport forward.

AI News Feed · 2026-10-07 02:59

Rob Bahr, senior engineer at BattleBots, said in an interview on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, that teams increasingly run simulations to choose weapons and strategies. He spoke with theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and John Furrier at the Fully Connected event. “What a lot of guys have started to do is run simulations on their computers of what type of weapon they want to use. Do they want to use a bar? Do they want to use a circle? Do they want a single tooth?” Bahr said. “They start using and running those simulations in each one of these scenarios to figure out what’s their best defense, what’s their best offense.”

Simulation has become more important as the materials used in combat robots change, Bahr said. Builders who once relied on rivets, wood and stainless-steel sheet metal are experimenting with 3D printing, plastics and rubbers, each of which needs testing. “There’s actually been a couple [of] teams that have started to try to do new designs. Especially with 3D printing and material changing so fast, people are starting to run simulations on different types of plastics, different types of rubbers,” he said.

BattleBots puts engineering designs to a competitive and destructive test. Bahr, known among builders as “Safety Rob,” described BattleBots engineers as the cream of the crop. “If you know something fails in BattleBots, you know that it failed. It’s broken. It’s in pieces or it’s on fire or something like that,” Bahr said.

Safety still sets the boundaries, particularly around lithium battery fires. Bahr said BattleBots has handled so many battery fires that it gave the National Fire Protection Association pointers on its NFPA 800 standard.

Bahr said AI is likely to play a larger role in computing, simulation and possibly autonomy. “I really think AI is going to play a key role in computing and simulation and possibly in the autonomy, which is going to push the hardware further than it’s already been,” he said. “It’s kind of like this leapfrog effect. You have good hardware, then you have good software. It’s going to definitely push the sport forward.”

The same compute behind the industry’s push into physical AI is now reaching engineers designing machines for competitive combat, and CoreWeave’s role as official AI cloud partner is part of that shift, according to SiliconANGLE.