# Tao Chen

> Tao Chen is the co-founder and CEO of Dexmate, a Santa Clara robotics startup building general-purpose mobile humanoid robots with genuinely dexterous hands. An MIT CSAIL PhD whose research on in-hand object reorientation won the CoRL 2021 Best Paper Award and landed in Science Robotics, Chen left academia to chase a single conviction: that robots will only matter when their hands can do the small, fiddly, human things. Dexmate's first product, Vega, a folding dual-armed robot built in under six months, is his bet that the moment has finally arrived.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Dexmate
- **Organizations:** Dexmate, MIT CSAIL, Carnegie Mellon University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
- **From:** China
- **Nationality:** Chinese
- **Education:** Ph.D., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (advisor: Prof. Pulkit Agrawal), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (CSAIL), M.S., Robotics (advisor: Prof. Abhinav Gupta), Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute, B.S., Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Exchange, Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University (GEARE exchange)
- **Known for:** CoRL 2021 Best Paper Award for 'A System for General In-Hand Object Re-Orientation', First-author paper in Science Robotics (Visual Dexterity, 2023), 22 papers in AI and robotics across CoRL, ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICRA

## Career timeline

- **2016** — Earned B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Automation from Shanghai Jiao Tong University; pivoted from mechanics to AI in his senior year
- **2019** — Completed M.S. in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Abhinav Gupta
- **2021** — Won CoRL Best Paper Award for 'A System for General In-Hand Object Re-Orientation'
- **2023** — Published 'Visual Dexterity' on in-hand reorientation in Science Robotics
- **2024** — Co-founded Dexmate in Santa Clara with Yuzhe Qin; joined NVIDIA Inception
- **2025** — Dexmate unveils Vega, a folding dual-armed mobile robot, and opens preorders
- **2026** — Dexmate raises seed funding (reported ~$33M total) from investors including LG Technology Ventures and Epsilon Ventures

## Achievements

- CoRL 2021 Best Paper Award for 'A System for General In-Hand Object Re-Orientation'
- First-author paper in Science Robotics (Visual Dexterity, 2023)
- 22 papers in AI and robotics across CoRL, ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICRA
- Co-creator of PyRobot, an open-source robotics framework with thousands of GitHub stars
- 2016 Excellent Bachelor Thesis (top 1%) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University
- Co-founded Dexmate and shipped Vega from concept to product in under six months
- NVIDIA Inception member; Dexmate reported to have raised ~$33M

## Latest updates

- **2026-03** — Dexmate's seed funding round dated to early 2026; company continues to scale Vega preorders and its research grant program.
- **2025** — Vega, the dual-armed folding mobile robot, opened for preorder at approximately $89,999 with a $999 deposit.

## Links

- Website: https://taochenshh.github.io/
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/taochenshh
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/taochenshh
- GitHub: https://github.com/taochenshh

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/tao-chen
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-21