Sanctuary AI, based in Vancouver, is developing humanoid robots guided by what they call the world’s first human-like intelligence in a general-purpose robot. Their Phoenix robot is designed to perform a wide range of work tasks that currently require human workers — retail, logistics, manufacturing, and eventually household chores.
What distinguishes Sanctuary’s approach is their focus on hands. Their robot features highly dexterous hands with 20 degrees of freedom, approaching the manipulation capability of human hands. Most competing humanoid robots use simpler grippers that can’t handle delicate or complex manipulation tasks. Sanctuary argues that hand dexterity is the critical bottleneck for useful humanoid robots.
The company’s AI system, Carbon, combines large language model reasoning with physical control models to let the robot understand natural language instructions and translate them into precise physical actions. The robot can learn new tasks through teleoperation — a human operator demonstrates the task remotely, and the AI learns to replicate it autonomously.
Sanctuary has raised over $175 million in funding and signed pilot deployments with Mark’s (a Canadian retailer) to test robots in store environments. Founded by Geordie Rose, who previously co-founded D-Wave (quantum computing) and Kindred AI (warehouse robotics), the company brings deep experience in both cutting-edge AI and commercial robotics deployment. They’re betting that general-purpose humanoid robots will address the growing global labor shortage across multiple industries.
