Sanctuary AI, a Vancouver-based company focused on creating human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots, has announced a collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate the development of AI models for humanoid robots, including Sanctuary AI's Phoenix. The partnership will leverage Microsoft's Azure cloud resources for AI workloads, aiming to evaluate model performance, efficiency, and planning capabilities.
Building upon the foundation of Large Language Models (LLMs), Sanctuary AI is working towards "Large Behavior Models" (LBMs) that ground AI in the physical world by enabling systems to learn from real-world experiences. These models will be integrated into Carbon, the AI control system for Sanctuary AI's Phoenix robots, designed to enable complex task execution.
Geordie Rose, CEO and Co-founder of Sanctuary AI, emphasized the significance of this collaboration, stating, "Creating systems that think like, and understand us, is one of the biggest civilization-level technical problems and opportunities that we will ever face. A challenge like this requires the best global minds to work together."
Sanctuary AI brings a wealth of expertise to the partnership, with a leadership team that includes founders of D-Wave, Kindred AI, and Softbank Robotics. The company has already demonstrated the capabilities of its robots through deployments in commercial settings, testing them across 400 customer-defined tasks in various industries.
Ashley Llorens, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director of Microsoft Research, expressed enthusiasm for the collaboration, saying, "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."
The collaboration between Sanctuary AI and Microsoft is not the only bet the tech giant is making in the field of humanoid robotics. In February, Figure, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a collaboration to develop next-generation AI models for humanoid robots. Similar to its arrangement with Sanctuary AI, Microsoft will provide Figure with access to Azure's extensive AI infrastructure, training, and storage solutions.