# Tony Zhao

> Tony Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of Sunday, a Mountain View-based robotics company building Memo - a home robot trained on 10 million episodes of real household routines. A Stanford PhD dropout and UC Berkeley EECS alum, Zhao invented ALOHA and ACT during his doctoral research, open-source frameworks that became foundational to modern robot manipulation. Sunday reached unicorn status in March 2026 with a $165M Series B led by Coatue, putting the company at a $1.15B valuation with a mission to put a helpful robot in every home.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Sunday
- **Organizations:** Sunday, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, DeepMind, Tesla, Google X
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), UC Berkeley, PhD Computer Science (dropped out), Stanford University
- **Known for:** Invented ALOHA (A Low-cost Open-source Hardware System for Bimanual Teleoperation) - a $20k robot system capable of threading zip ties, juggling ping pong balls, and assembling chains, Developed ACT (Action Chunking with Transformers), a novel imitation learning algorithm, Created Mobile ALOHA, extending bimanual manipulation to mobile settings - demonstrated sauteing shrimp, cleaning wine spills, calling elevators

## Career timeline

- **2017-2021** — Studied EECS at UC Berkeley
- **2021** — Joined Stanford CS PhD program, advised by Chelsea Finn; received Stanford Robotics Fellowship
- **2022** — Worked at DeepMind and Tesla (internships/research roles)
- **2023** — Published ALOHA - a low-cost open-source bimanual teleoperation system; published ACT (Action Chunking with Transformers)
- **2024** — Published Mobile ALOHA; dropped out of Stanford PhD; co-founded Sunday Robotics with Cheng Chi
- **2025** — Raised $35M Series A led by Benchmark and Conviction; launched Memo robot (November 2025); opened Founding Family Beta program
- **2026** — Raised $165M Series B led by Coatue at $1.15B valuation (March 2026); Sunday achieves unicorn status

## Achievements

- Invented ALOHA (A Low-cost Open-source Hardware System for Bimanual Teleoperation) - a $20k robot system capable of threading zip ties, juggling ping pong balls, and assembling chains
- Developed ACT (Action Chunking with Transformers), a novel imitation learning algorithm
- Created Mobile ALOHA, extending bimanual manipulation to mobile settings - demonstrated sauteing shrimp, cleaning wine spills, calling elevators
- Stanford Robotics Fellowship recipient (2022-23)
- Co-founded Sunday Robotics, raising $200M+ total funding
- Led Sunday to unicorn status ($1.15B valuation) within ~2 years of founding
- Built team of 70+ engineers from Stanford, Tesla, DeepMind, Waymo, Meta, OpenAI, and Apple
- Trained Memo on approximately 10 million episodes of genuine household routines

## Latest updates

- **2026-03** — Sunday raises $165M Series B at $1.15B valuation led by Coatue; Tony Laffont joins the board
- **2025-11** — Sunday launches Memo robot publicly; opens Founding Family Beta program for 50 households
- **2025-11** — Sunday raises $35M Series A led by Benchmark and Conviction
- **2024-01** — Mobile ALOHA research published, demonstrates household task completion including cooking and cleaning

## Links

- Website: https://tonyzhaozh.github.io/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-z-zhao/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/tonyzzhao

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/tony-zhao
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-22