Microsoft to build humanoid robots

Microsoft has now announced a collaboration with Sanctuary AI (which is known for its humanoid robot, Phoenix) to develop general-purpose humanoid robots.

What will the collaboration involve?

Sanctuary AI and Microsoft will work together to bolster research and development into humanoid robotics, focusing on building  Large Behavior Models (LBMs), which are similar to Large Language Models (LLMs) but help robots learn from real-world environments and experiences, as opposed to learning from computer simulations.

Sanctuary AI will bring their deep robotic development technical expertise and experience–which includes the development of their “robot brain”, called Carbon (powered by LBMs)--to the collaboration, and Microsoft will power the AI workloads–involving training, networking, and storage–with their Azure cloud resources.

“Through our collaboration, Sanctuary AI will have access to Microsoft Azure infrastructure and services as they explore the future of general-purpose robots that can assist across various use cases and industries.” Ashley Llorens, Microsoft Research VP and MD

Who is Sanctuary AI?

Sanctuary AI is on a mission to create the world's first general-purpose robots, with human-like intelligence. Last year it was the first company to trial humanoid general-purpose robots in a commercial setting, deploying its Phoenix robot into one of Canada’s biggest retailers, where it performed front-of-house, logistics, and warehouse-style tasks. To date, Phoenix has completed over 400 customer-defined tasks across 15 different industries, including automotive, manufacturing, and logistics.

Even more recently, Sanctuary AI scored a pilot partnership with Magna, which will bring the latest version of its Phoenix robot to car plants.

Why Microsoft has formed this collaboration

Microsoft, having led a $675M Series B funding round into Sanctuary AI competitor, FigureAI, in February, is clearly committed to AI development, particularly in robotics, with Microsoft founder, Bill Gates himself, speaking recently about his interest in humanoids earlier this year (although Sanctuary AI didn’t get a mention, its rivals, Agility and Apptronik did).

“We’re excited to be working with Sanctuary AI to accelerate AI model innovation and embodied AI research in areas like reasoning, planning, and human-agent collaboration.” Ashley Llorens, Microsoft Research VP and MD

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