AI Nightlife Booms In San Francisco With Robots As A Draw

InnovationAIAI Nightlife Booms In San Francisco With Robots As A DrawByMartine Paris,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Martine Paris is a San Francisco-based writer covering AI trendsFollow AuthorMay 14, 2026, 11:11pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Forbes Tech Contributor Martine Paris with Agility Robotics industrial robot Digit at a press salon in San Francisco, May 13, 2026.Martine ParisDigit and I stood quietly on the side of the candlelit room. It was an industrial-sized bi-pedal robot, made for warehouse work. It didn’t talk, but can be enabled to, I was told. Weighing in at around 220 pounds, its eyes dotted around the room as its legs dangled in suspension. There was an E-stop button in back in the unlikely event it were to go rogue.Neither of us ate as the press started to fill in. We were at a bougie pizzeria in the shiny East Cut neighborhood of San Francisco, across the bridge from the Musk v Altman trial from where some of the media were coming. It was exciting to see San Francisco back in all its glory, with its speedy Muni cars zipping dreamers and builders from event to event. A future-facing city drawing ambitious people with a passion for vibe-coding agents, free-wheeling Waymos and oversharing chatbots. The town was alive with activity. I opted to miss a factory floor tour at BCG Edge Expo to meet up with Digit and needed to dart off to a dinner party to meet the incoming and outgoing PagerDuty CEOs John Dilullo and Jennifer Tejada. But first wanted to see if Digit was truly autonomous as I had grown skeptical of hyped humanoids that so often turn out to be remote-controlled and scripted. Agility Robotics Chief Business Officer Daniel Diez assured me the robot is working on its own, performing its job without human intervention, other than fleet monitoring from a remote operations center.MORE FOR YOU“When the c...