The crowd cheers the action during an Ultimate Fighting Bots match at Frontier Tower in San Francisco, on Aug 8, 2025. The AI boom has techies flocking to San Francisco, fueling a nightlife resurgence of suitably tech culture inspired events, like cage match boxing robots. — Minh Connors/The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO: Inside an underground boxing ring, a jab by a humanoid robot sent the other humanoid robot stumbling backward. The audience roared as the referee slapped the mat to count the knockout. In a rumbling voice, the announcer rallied the crowd to pump their fists and chant: “Robot fight club! Robot fight club!”
“It was honestly really surreal that this is happening in 2025,” said Jonathan Moon, 26, the CEO of Budbreak, a startup that builds robots to inspect vineyards, who attended fight night. “It felt like something that should be happening in like 2040.”
