FCC waiver covers Matic models whose radios were already approved

2 min read•Oct 6, 2026•

The FCC added Matic’s original robot vacuum and charging dock to its waiver list, though the products already had approved radios, in a decision first reported by The Verge. The listing covers two specific models and lets the FCC approve the radio products for import, marketing and sale, but it does not grant blanket approval for future Matic robots.

The October 2 list names the original Matic, model 4MA0001, and charging dock, model 4DK0008. Matic assembles its robots in Mountain View, California, and equips them with an off-the-shelf Intel AX210 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip that has its own FCC approval; Matic’s products do not receive FCC approval themselves.

The FCC’s foreign drone, robot and router bans apply to future imports, not existing products whose radios were already approved. The waiver is also narrower than the blanket approval granted to Asus and Netgear routers: it covers two Matic model numbers, not the brand’s future robots.

The waiver adds no new radio approval for those models, but could matter if a foreign component becomes an issue as the FCC tightens enforcement. The agency is trying to close loopholes, weighing whether manufacturers should disclose all gadget components and retroactively cracking down on some companies it sees as flaunting the rules.

Matic does not yet source 65 percent of its components from US suppliers, the threshold for being considered Made in the US. Co-founder and CEO Mehul Nariyawala says the company gets its core compute platform from Nvidia and sources other critical components from US companies whenever possible.

Nariyawala says that until three months ago, Matic’s R&D offices and production facilities shared a roughly 24,000-square-foot Mountain View space; the company has since converted the entire facility to production and moved its office to Menlo Park. Shipments rose from 1,500 robots a year ago to 17,000 now, he says, and Matic is seeking more US suppliers so it can use fewer foreign parts.

Oct 7, 2026

Arizona appeals court vacates manslaughter sentence after AI video

An Arizona appeals court vacated the 10.5-year sentence of Gabriel Horcasitas while upholding his manslaughter conviction, first reported by Nytimes. The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for resentencing without the video, after judges found that it presented scripted statements as if the victim himself were speaking in court.

The three-judge panel said the video generated a likeness of Christopher Pelkey’s voice and appearance but did not reflect actual events. It found that allowing and relying on the video made the sentencing fundamentally unfair, and noted that no prior Arizona case had addressed the admissibility of such a depiction at sentencing.

The judges said a victim’s right to speak cannot override a defendant’s right to be sentenced on accurate, reliable information. They said the video collapsed the distinction between the family’s belief about what Pelkey would have said and Pelkey’s own voice and opinions.

The ruling distinguishes family members speaking about Pelkey from a generated likeness that appeared to speak for him.

Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, presented the video during Horcasitas’s sentencing alongside victim-impact statements from family and friends. Wales wrote the script and said her husband and the couple’s longtime business partner helped create the video using Pelkey’s voice from a YouTube video and his face and torso from a funeral-service poster.

Judge Todd F. Lang praised the video as genuine, then imposed the maximum sentence of 10.5 years, more than the nine years prosecutors had sought.

Wales said nobody intended to make the court believe Pelkey was alive or that he had recorded the video before his death. She said she disagreed with the ruling and argued that families use slide shows, collages, hypothetical conversations and poetry to convey grief.

Wales compared the AI video with photography, saying it took 15 years of landmark cases around the 1860s before photography was widely accepted in courts.

The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for a new sentencing hearing without the AI-generated video.