Microsoft strengthens its commitment to AI and robotics by collaborating with Sanctuary AI, a company specializing in humanoid robots.
Microsoft has announced a collaboration with Vancouver-based robotics company Sanctuary AI to accelerate the development of AI models for general-purpose humanoid robots, including Sanctuary's Phoenix robot.
The startup is working to develop "Large Behavior Models" (LBMs) that ground AI in the physical world and enable systems to understand and learn from real-world experiences. Such foundational models for robotics are considered central to the next generation of robots and are also being researched by other companies such as Google and Nvidia.
Introducing: Phoenix™ Gen 7
Major improvements, all delivered in less than a year. Our next generation of general-purpose technology marks an inflection point in task automation velocity.
“With Generation 7, we can capture increasing quantities of higher quality, higher… pic.twitter.com/gZtl307oKw
— Sanctuary AI (@TheSanctuaryAI) April 25, 2024
Sanctuary AI uses Azure cloud, Microsoft diversifies its robotics investment
The partnership gives Sanctuary access to Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure for AI workloads, and is intended to strengthen joint research and development efforts. The two companies have previously collaborated on a research project in remote robotics.
Sanctuary AI's leadership team includes the founders of quantum computing pioneer D-Wave, Kindred AI, the first company to apply reinforcement learning to manufacturing robots, and SoftBank Robotics.
For Microsoft, the partnership represents a diversification of its general-purpose robotics investments: the tech giant recently made a $675 million Series B investment in Bay Area-based Figure, another player in the humanoid robotics space. This follows Microsoft's investments in large language model providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral.
