Sanctuary AI puts its robot control software on other makers' arms

Sanctuary AI said on 17 June 2026 that it will deploy its Physical AI control software on commercial industrial robots already on factory floors, instead of waiting for its Phoenix humanoid to reach mass production. The company framed the shift as hardware-agnostic: the model is the product, and the body it runs on is a customer’s choice.

The claim rests on one task at a global Tier 1 automotive supplier. Sanctuary reported a success rate above 99.5% inserting a plug on a moving conveyor, at a cycle time of 2.54 seconds — matching the throughput of the customer’s live line — across 313 trials. Plug insertion resists automation because the wire is flexible and shifts while the belt moves, so the target is never twice in the same place.

Covering the strategy on 29 August, Forbes reported that Daniel Friedmann, formerly chief executive of MDA and later Carbon Engineering, is now leading the company, and quoted him saying deployments on existing hardware were weeks away. The same account still describes the wire-plugging application as proof-of-concept. No customer has been named, and no unit count has been given for robots running the software in production.