Microsoft, it seems, is hedging its bets when it comes to general-purpose robotic AI. In late February, the Windows maker led a massive $675 million Series B in Bay Area-based Figure. Today, the tech giant announced a partnership with Figure competitor Sanctuary AI, best known for its humanoid robot Phoenix.
The Sanctuary partnership is really at the heart of Microsoft’s interest in the category: artificial general intelligence. It’s a concept that comes up a lot when discussing humanoid robots—too often, I’d say, given the way things are. While such breakthroughs are likely several years away (at least), they are required for humanoid robots to reach the promise of “general purpose mode.”
In essence, this means robots that can learn and reason like humans. This represents a potential quantum leap for robotic capabilities, which have traditionally been limited to one or two tasks. The humanoid form factor opens these systems up to a much wider range of motion than single-purpose systems, but ultimately they’ll need the intelligence to match.
“Creating systems that think about us and understand us is one of the biggest technical problems and cultural opportunities we’ll ever face,” notes Sanctuary co-founder and CEO Geordie Rose. “A challenge like this requires the world’s best minds to work together. We are excited to work with Microsoft to unlock the next generation of AI models that will power general purpose robots.”
Such a partnership deepens Microsoft’s commitment to AI development and provides a partner that can design hardware to these specifications. Sanctuary has been operating in the space for some time now and recently achieved a pilot partnership with Magna, which will bring the latest version of the Phoenix to car factories.
In total, Sanctuary robots “have been tested on 400 customer-defined tasks in 15 different industries.” Of course, we’re still in the very early stages of all of this.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke about his own interest in humanoids earlier this year. Neither Sanctuary nor Figure were mentioned, although he did spend some time discussing competitors Agility and Apptronik.
Microsoft isn’t alone in hedging its bets in the category. OpenAI (another Microsoft partner) has made its own investments in both Figure and competitor 1X.
