Sanctuary AI
Vancouver-based humanoid maker; Phoenix robot powered by Carbon cognitive architecture. Founded 2018 by Geordie Rose (ex-D-Wave + Kindred). Less well-funded than Figure / 1X / Apptronik but with a distinctive cognitive-architecture (atomic-action-based) approach.
At a glance
- Type
- General-purpose humanoid (Phoenix) — cognitive-architecture-led
- Tier
- T3
- Created
- 2018 (founded)
- Latest release
- Phoenix Gen 7 (2023)
- License
- not applicable — not OSS
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo
- Pricing
- not applicable — wrong section
- Funding
- $130M+ total (Bell + Magna + EvokOne)
Taxonomy
- storage
- weight
- retrieval
- parametric-recall
- persistence
- parametric-permanent
- update
- agent-controlled
- unit
- trajectory
- governance
- opaque
- conflict
- training-time
When to use
Optimised for: Cognitive-architecture-driven humanoid (Carbon) vs end-to-end VLA
Anti-fit: Smaller funding than top humanoid makers; cognitive-arch approach less aligned with current FM trend
Pros & cons
Pros
Distinctive cognitive-architecture lineage (ex-D-Wave / Kindred); Magna pilot.
Cons
Smaller funding than peers; cognitive-arch is unproven vs end-to-end VLA momentum.
Claims & capabilities
Phoenix (Gen 7) launched May-2023; Carbon cognitive architecture; Magna pilot Mar-2024
Technical surface
- API surface
- No public API
- Backend storage
- Internal Sanctuary cloud (Carbon arch.)
- Deployment
- Direct customer pilot
- Embedding model
- not applicable — not a memory product
- Multi-tenancy
- Per-customer pilot
- MCP
- not applicable — wrong section
- A2A
- not applicable — wrong section
- OpenTelemetry
- not applicable — wrong section
Similar systems
Other robotics foundation models & agent stacks in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Google DeepMind Gemini Robotics T1
Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics + Gemini Robotics-ER (Embodied Reasoning) released Mar-2025. VLA models built on Gemini 2.0 backbone. Reference platform: Apptronik Apollo. The DeepMind line of robotics-FM, descendant of earlier RT-1 / RT-2 / RT-X work.
- Physical Intelligence (π) T1
Founded 2024 by Sergey Levine (UC Berkeley) and Karol Hausman + others (ex-Google Brain Robotics). Building general-purpose robot foundation models (π0 released Oct-2024; π0.5 in 2025) trained on cross-embodiment robot trajectories. Raised $400M Series A (Nov-2024; Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive, Lux) at $2.4B val.
- 1X Technologies T2
Norway / US humanoid robot company — Eve (wheeled bimanual) + Neo (legged humanoid, consumer-targeted, late 2025 / 2026 launch). Raised $100M Series B (Jan-2024, EQT + OpenAI Startup Fund); $40M Series A (Mar-2023, OpenAI lead). Distinguishing feature: consumer-home positioning rather than industrial.
- Agility Robotics T2
Oregon-based humanoid maker; Digit is in production at GXO Logistics warehouses since Sep-2024 — claimed first humanoid in commercial service in the US. Spinout of Oregon State University. $400M+ raised (Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund participant).
- Apptronik T2
Apollo humanoid maker, spun out of University of Texas Human Centered Robotics Lab. Raised $350M Series A (Feb-2025; B Capital + Capital Factory); Mercedes-Benz manufacturing partner (Mar 2024). Partnered with Google DeepMind on Gemini Robotics (Mar 2025) — Apollo is the headline reference platform for Gemini Robotics.
- Collaborative Robotics T3
Founded 2022 by Brad Porter (ex-Amazon Robotics VP + Scale AI CTO). Stealthier than the humanoid pack; raised $100M Series B Apr-2024 (General Catalyst). Targets warehouse + healthcare collaborative robots.