Series A Funding - Another Step Toward Building Machines That Can Think Like People
Today is an exciting day for Sanctuary. This morning, we publicly announced the successful closing of our Series A funding. We raised a total of C$75.5 million (U$58.5 million) in an oversubscribed round that included many leading organizations that we had originally approached as potential customers who, almost unanimously, became investors. I see this as an indication that they believe in the strategic power of the technology that we're building and want to play an active role in advancing the use of AI and robotics across a wide range of industry applications.
Everything you might want to do as a technologist or creator of things comes from the human mind. Thus, if you can build a machine that has a human-like mind, you've transcended the usual limits of what technology’s bounds are. At Sanctuary, our goal is to understand the human mind well enough to build one in a machine.
This approach is markedly different from the specialized AI and robotics currently being developed by others that are designed to serve singular purposes. The advent of a general-purpose, human-like technology like ours will fundamentally change the nature of our relationship to technology and our connection to the world around us. It will immensely broaden our understanding of what we are and potentially help us answer some of the questions that have been around for eons about the nature of our role in the universe.
When we think about finding a cure for cancer, addressing climate change, or colonizing other planets, we take it for granted that people will be needed to do all the thinking and reasoning to come up with novel solutions and then execute them. But what if you could build a machine that thought, reasoned, and interacted with the world like a person? What if you were not limited to having access to just one human-like mind? Just think how much more quickly we could arrive at the solution. Machines that could work like this will become a vital part of solving all kinds of complex problems. But it's not just forward-looking use cases. These machines could also be used in the near term to perform tasks that are too dangerous for people, be it clearing a mine or even sterilizing a hospital room.
At Sanctuary, we see the beginning of a new era. All of the transitions that human civilization went through from the industrial revolution to the agricultural revolution before it will look like tiny blips on the radar compared to the implications of building machines that can think like people.
This is not just about building a business, and it's not just about doing the best we can. We don't want to just work on the problem. We want to solve the problem as quickly as possible and usher in this new era. It’s this passionate commitment to success that all of us here at Sanctuary share. Yes, it's challenging. Yes, it's complicated. But it's all worth it. Working with people who share the same passion and dedication to success is a joy.
No matter whether you are a software or hardware engineer, someone who’s built AAA games titles, someone with expertise in 3D modelling, animation, or networking -- you have skills that are going to be vitally in demand in the future in the field of human-like intelligence. And to all the workers, dreamers, and explorers out there, we hope you join us in support of our mission to create the first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots for the good of all of humankind.
Geordie Rose
Co-Founder and former CEO
Sanctuary
Sanctuary is on a mission to create the world’s first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots. 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.