/C O R R E C T I O N -- Virtuals.IO/

In the news release, Virtuals Protocol Launches Eastworld Labs to Accelerate Real-World Deployment of Humanoid Robots, issued 23-Feb-2026 by Virtuals.IO over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that changes have been made. The complete, corrected release follows, with additional details at the end:

Virtuals Protocol Launches Eastworld Labs to Accelerate Real-World Deployment of Humanoid Robots

AI Accelerator Aims to Create World's First Hybrid Society of Robots, Virtual Agents and Humans to Scale the Global AI Economy of Tomorrow

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtuals Protocol's embodied AI division, Virtuals Robotics, today announced the launch of Eastworld Labs, a new kind of AI accelerator that aims to dramatically scale humanoid robots' usage and create the world's first hybrid society of robots, virtual agents, and humans. It will start by using humanoid robots and low-latency teleoperation to capture wage arbitrage in G7 economies while building the foundation of full agent autonomy for the global AI economy of tomorrow. The initiative will continue to extend Virtuals Protocol — which powers the world's largest AI agent economy with over 18,000 agents — from digital services into the physical world.

Unlike traditional startup incubators or robotics labs, Eastworld Labs provides founders a fully integrated stack — combining humanoid robot fleets, industrial-scale datasets, autonomous AI agents and onchain funding into a single environment where humans and agents co-produce economic value at unprecedented efficiency.

"AI-powered humanoid robots are currently hamstrung by two fundamental bottlenecks:  lack of data and capital. As a result, they don't produce enough economic value," said Jansen Teng, co-founder of Virtuals Protocol. "Eastworld Labs solves this problem. We're giving builders direct access to humanoid robots, rich datasets, cloud and hardware infrastructure, and capital to deploy and scale AI robot systems in the wild with superior efficiency."

What Makes Eastworld Labs Unique

Eastworld Labs delivers a full stack for AI-powered humanoid projects that other AI accelerators and standalone robotics companies do not — pairing physical infrastructure with funding, distribution, governance, and the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), the industry's first, full-lifecycle commerce protocol and marketplace that creates an economy powered by autonomous AI agents. 

Key components of Eastworld Labs include:

Industrial-Scale Robotics Access
A growing fleet of over 30 full-sized, humanoid robots, including Unitree G1 platforms, giving teams direct access to real hardware for experimentation, testing, and deployment.

Unified Egocentric Data Engine
A high-throughput data pipeline powered by SeeSaw and teleoperation, producing one of the world's most diversified egocentric datasets for humanoid training with over 500,000 recorded tasks collected to-date.

Simulation, World Models, and Policy Training
Collaboration with research groups developing VLA (visual-language-action) models, simulation frameworks, and high-fidelity world models, enabling rapid iteration from simulation to physical trials.

Physical Evaluation and Industrial Testbeds
Controlled environments modeling real industries — including logistics, agriculture, manufacturing, and large-scale site operations — where teams can stress-test, multi-agent coordination, ACP-mediated commerce, and the economics of autonomous labor before full deployment.

Use Cases and Focus Areas

Eastworld Labs is designed to accelerate applications where humanoid robots have a clear "right to win," meaning jobs requiring bipedal movement and dexterity that wheeled robots cannot do. Such jobs include:  

• Farming and food production
• Warehouse logistics and fulfillment
• Manufacturing and assembly lines
• Facilities maintenance and site operations
• Security, patrol, and monitoring
• Hospital and domestic support roles

In the near term, many deployments will leverage low-latency teleoperation to unlock immediate cost savings through global labor arbitrage while simultaneously generating the massive datasets required to transition AI systems toward full autonomy.

"We're building the world's first agentic nation state, an intelligent economy where thousands of autonomous virtual agents and humanoid robots can learn, coordinate, and operate labor-intensive systems that sustain modern human life," added Teng.

Building Toward an Agentic AI Economy

Eastworld Labs advances the broader Virtuals Protocol mission to grow Agentic GDP (aGDP) — the total economic value generated by autonomous AI agents. By extending Virtuals' infrastructure stack into the physical world, the initiative demonstrates how decentralized AI, transparent commerce, and embodied AI can combine to reshape the cost structure of a wide array of industries.

As agents scale across cognitive, creative, and operational workflows, agent-driven output will eventually surpass human contribution, shifting humans' roles toward high-level orchestration.

"We believe that aGDP will soon become the primary engine of global economic activity," added Teng. "And aGDP will surpass human GDP only when AI agents exist in the physical world."

What Eastworld Labs Seeks From Founders

Starting later in Q1, Virtuals Robotics is inviting founders, research teams, and operators to apply to build inside Eastworld Labs. Follow the homepage here for updates. Founders are expected to bring deep domain expertise, strong execution capability, and the ambition to secure pilots and scale real-world deployments.

Ideal applicants include:

• Robotics startups working on humanoids or physical automation
• Research labs advancing embodied AI, control systems, or autonomy
• University robotics groups with ambitious physical prototypes
• Operator-founders seeking to build physical AI BPOs (business process outsourcing) in specific verticals

About Virtuals Protocol
Virtuals Protocol is a society of autonomous AI agents that creates economic value in a hybrid economy with humans and other agents. The Virtuals Protocol removes two key bottlenecks facing embodied AI — lack of data and capital — through its four interconnected ecosystem units:  1) Butler, the user interface for human-to-agent collaboration; 2) Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), which creates an economy powered by autonomous AI agents; 3) Unicorn, the "Wall Street" of capital formation for tokenized AI agents that fuel the agent economy; and 4) Virtuals Robotics, which extends AI agents into the physical world alongside humans. Built primarily on the Base network, the protocol provides a fully integrated stack — including Unicorn, GAME framework, and ACP that enable agents to function as tokenized, revenue-generating businesses. With over 18,000 agents deployed, the Virtuals ecosystem has a total Agentic GDP (aGDP) of over $470M and growing. Founded in 2021 by Jansen Teng and Wee Kee, Virtuals Protocol is establishing the decentralized infrastructure required for an autonomous AI agent civilization and robust Agentic GDP (aGDP). For more information, visit https://virtuals.io/.

Correction: An earlier version of this release incorrectly read "Starting this week" under the "What Eastworld Labs Seeks From Founders" heading. It now reads "Starting later in Q1."

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SOURCE Virtuals.IO