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