imitation-learning
(3)
Sensei Robotics
Sensei Robotics (YC S24) is a San Francisco startup building the data layer for robot learning. It pairs a sub-$300 sensorized exoskeleton arm with a distributed network of trained human operators - 'Senseis' - who perform real-world manipulation demonstrations on demand. Robotics and AI teams submit a task like folding cloth or loading a dishwasher, and Sensei returns curated, labeled human-demonstration data. The company positions itself as 'the Scale AI for robotics training data,' claiming roughly a tenth of the cost and twice the speed of conventional teleoperation setups.
Anvil Robotics
Anvil Robotics is a Palo Alto-based hardware and software company building a composable platform for Physical AI. It sells ready-to-run robot devkits - most notably the open-source OpenARM bimanual manipulator and the OpenYAM arm - bundled with teleoperation, data-collection, and training tooling so teams can train end-to-end robot policies on day one instead of spending six months sourcing and wiring parts. Backed by a $6.5M seed round, Anvil manufactures in-house in Taiwan and has shipped hundreds of robots to customers including Nvidia, Google, and university labs.
Sunday
Sunday is a Mountain View robotics company building Memo, a wheeled home robot that learns chores like loading the dishwasher, folding laundry and pulling espresso shots. Founded by Stanford PhD roboticists Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi, Sunday emerged from stealth in late 2025 and reached a $1.15B valuation in March 2026 after a $165M Series B led by Coatue.