A Transformational Few Months for Sanctuary AI
The last few months have been some of our busiest for news. In the space of just six weeks, we made five key announcements. It has been amazing to see the reception of our announcements.
Now that we have a moment to breathe, we wanted to share a roundup of all of the announcements, and some notable highlights from the media coverage we received.
March 18th: NVIDIA Announces Project GR00T Foundation Model for Humanoid Robots and Major Isaac Robotics Platform Update
Our partner, NVIDIA, announced Project GR00T, a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots, designed to further its work driving breakthroughs in robotics and embodied AI.
Our former CEO Geordie Rose, was quoted in the press release from NVIDIA:
“Embodied AI will not only help address some of humanity’s biggest challenges, but also create innovations which are currently beyond our reach or imagination. Technology this important shouldn’t be built in silos, which is why we prioritize long-term partners like NVIDIA.”
In an article titled ‘Nvidia enlists humanoid robotics’ biggest names for new AI platform, GR00T’, Brian Heater from TechCrunch includes Geordie’s quote in his piece, along with a notable quote from NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang:
“Building foundation models for general humanoid robots is one of the most exciting problems to solve in AI today.”
We couldn’t agree more.
March 27th: Accenture Invests in Sanctuary AI to Bring AI-Powered, Humanoid Robotics to Work Alongside Humans
Accenture, one of the largest global professional services firms, also announced a strategic investment in Sanctuary AI. Accenture serves more than three quarters of the Fortune Global 100 and Fortune Global 500. The investment gives us access to Accenture’s enterprise clients and domain expertise, while allowing Accenture to anticipate and manage the changes that will be brought about by AI-powered, general purpose humanoid robots.
The announcement was listed as one of The Robot Report’s top 10 stories in March, with journalist Mike Oitzman noting our hands-first approach in his story:
“While other humanoid developers have focused much of their energy on bipedal locomotion, Sanctuary has taken a different approach with its Phoenix™ robot. It believes object manipulation is the key to humanoid success in the market and has put most of its energy into hand-eye coordination and AI intelligence to support dexterous manipulation.”
April 11th: Sanctuary AI Expands General Purpose Robot Footprint in Automotive Manufacturing Industry
Our first announcement of April was a multifaceted partnership with Magna, one of the largest automotive suppliers in the world and a significant buyer of industrial robots. The collaboration features:
Sanctuary AI’s development of general purpose AI robots for deployment in Magna’s manufacturing operations
A multi-disciplinary assessment of improving cost and scalability of robots using Magna’s automotive product portfolio, engineering and manufacturing capabilities
A strategic equity investment by Magna
The news was covered by Thomas Seal, Bloomberg’s Vancouver Bureau Chief, who referenced the adaptability of our general-purpose robot, Phoenix, and its ‘dextrous human-like hands’. We also saw some great pieces in TechCrunch, The Robot Report, and The Logic. Hebert Ong also did an excellent video breakdown of the announcement on his YouTube channel, Brighter With Herbert.
April 25th: Sanctuary AI Unveils the Next Generation of AI Robotics
Two weeks after announcing Magna, we unveiled the seventh generation of Phoenix, less than 12 months after we announced gen six. The latest generation and its AI control system, Carbon™, draw even closer to that of a person, with wide ranging improvements to both the hardware and AI software. The time it takes for new tasks to be automated has gone from weeks to less than 24 hours, marking a major milestone in task automation speed and autonomous system capability.
On the day of our launch, Geordie caught up with BNN Bloomberg, who called us an ‘AI success story’. The interview discussed the Magna announcement, as well as the gen seven launch, which Geordie described as a ‘critical step on the path to artificial general intelligence’.
We also saw another brilliant breakdown of the announcement in Brighter With Herbert, as well as a piece in TechCrunch which neatly summarized the improvements in its headline: “Sanctuary’s new humanoid robot learns faster and costs less”. Some other standout pieces were a fantastic Diginomica article following an interview that Geordie had with the author, Chris Middleton, a piece in Betakit describing gen seven as ‘Sanctuary AI’s most human-like robot yet’, and a great piece in Interesting Engineering.
May 1st: Sanctuary AI Announces Microsoft Collaboration to Accelerate AI Development for General Purpose Robots
Rounding out an amazing six weeks was the announcement of our collaboration with Microsoft. We are working with them to bolster AI research and development, while also leveraging Microsoft’s Azure cloud resources for our AI workloads.
Building on the work we’ve already undertaken with Microsoft to help unlock remote physical work, this collaboration will play a role in our progress towards "Large Behavior Models" (LBMs) that ground AI in the physical world by enabling systems to understand and learn from real world experience.
The collaboration, described as ‘stunning’ by Brighter With Herbert, also featured in TechCrunch, where author Brian Heater said:
“Such a partnership deepens Microsoft’s commitment to AI development and delivers a partner who can design hardware to those specifications. Sanctuary has been operating in the space for some time now, and recently scored a pilot partnership with Magna, which will bring the latest version of Phoenix to car plants.”
There were also a few fantastic pieces in Canadian Manufacturing, Interesting Engineering, and Yahoo Finance.
This year, we have also conducted several engaging media interviews, leading to an interesting piece in the Institution of Mechanical Engineers which discusses how our technology could be a solution to some of the biggest challenges facing humanity. We also held an interview with a journalist from The Economist, which led to a series of articles relating to the work we are doing and the emerging category of humanoid general purpose robots. You can read the three pieces here:
To quote the final article:
“Robots that can act and perform tasks like humans may not be the stuff of science fiction for long.”
We’d like to thank every journalist and reader for their interest, as well as everyone who has supported us on this journey.
Ben Reed
CMO
Sanctuary
Sanctuary is on a mission to create the world’s first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots that will help us work more safely, efficiently, and sustainably, helping to address the labor challenges facing many organizations today. Sanctuary's growing list of customers and investors represents a wide variety of industries across Canada, the U.S., and other countries around the world.
Join us and work with world leaders in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognition, and robotics—all working together toward a common goal. Visit our careers page to learn more.
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