# Asad Tirmizi

> Asad Tirmizi is the co-founder and CEO of Trener Robotics, formerly T-ROBOTICS. A robotics and haptics researcher educated in Pakistan, Sweden and Italy, he previously worked at Flanders Make, Vicarious and ByteDance. He co-founded Trener with Lars Tingelstad in 2024 to develop industrial robot skills and natural-language task control through Acteris.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Trener Robotics
- **Organizations:** Trener Robotics, ByteDance, Vicarious, Flanders Make, University of Siena, Air University
- **Nationality:** Pakistani
- **Education:** BE in Aeronautical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, MS in Controls, Karlstad University, PhD in Robotics and Haptics, University of Siena
- **Known for:** Received SIDRA award for doctoral research in systems and control in 2016., Co-founded Trener Robotics in 2024., Reported first customer deployment after five months and 11 days and $38,000 in spending.

## Career timeline

- **2008-2010** — Research engineer at Air University, Pakistan.
- **2016** — Completed doctorate at University of Siena; received SIDRA doctoral thesis award.
- **—** — Led Factory-of-the-Future research at Flanders Make in Belgium.
- **—** — Worked at Vicarious and subsequently contributed to robotics and haptics at ByteDance.
- **2023** — Announced departure from TikTok and plans to start T-ROBOTICS.
- **2024** — Co-founded T-ROBOTICS with Lars Tingelstad; reported first customer deployment in July.
- **2024-12** — Company announced $5.4 million seed funding and won ABB AI Startup Challenge.
- **2026-02** — Trener Robotics announced $32 million Series A.

## Achievements

- Received SIDRA award for doctoral research in systems and control in 2016.
- Co-founded Trener Robotics in 2024.
- Reported first customer deployment after five months and 11 days and $38,000 in spending.
- Led company through $5.4 million seed round and $32 million Series A.
- Company won ABB AI Startup Challenge 2024, CECIMO Machine Tools Innovation Award 2025 and Industry Startup Forum Award 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Trener joined Arm Total Design for Physical AI and work on a robotics capability framework.
- **2026-08** — Trener announced participation as a founding AI Models and Software partner in AMD Open Robotics Ecosystem.
- **2026-05** — Trener won Industry Startup Forum Award at Advanced Factories in Barcelona.
- **2026-02** — Company announced $32 million Series A, taking total funding above $38 million.

## Links

- Website: http://www.dii.unisi.it/~tirmizi/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tirmizi/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/asad-tirmizi
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-23