robot-learning
(4)
Instance
Instance is a San Francisco startup building the autonomous evaluation rig for robot learning. Its first product is a success detector that watches a robot's rollout video, reads the task description, and returns a verdict on whether the task was completed - with a subtask-by-subtask breakdown. Founded in 2026 by MIT classmates and childhood friends Claire Mao and Lucy Cai, Instance is part of Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch and aims to remove humans from the tedious loop of watching robots, grading them, and resetting the scene.
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.
Lightwheel
Lightwheel is a Physical AI infrastructure company building the data layer that teaches robots to work in the real world. It produces physically accurate SimReady 3D assets, egocentric human demonstration data, and evaluation platforms so robots can learn safely and cheaply in simulation before they are deployed. Founded in 2023 by former autonomous-driving-simulation lead Steve Xie, Lightwheel partners with NVIDIA and supplies simulation assets and synthetic datasets to leading robotics teams.
Mbodi AI
Mbodi AI is a New York robotics-software company building an embodied AI platform that lets people teach industrial robots new skills through plain natural language and short demonstrations - no code and no specialized engineers. Founded in 2024 by two former Google Public DNS engineers, the platform combines generative AI, agent orchestration and symbolic reasoning to turn everyday instructions into precise, reliable robot actions that run in production within minutes and transfer across an entire robot fleet. Mbodi is a Y Combinator company with a joint commercialization partnership with ABB Robotics.