Co-founder and CEO @sundayrobotics. Stanford PhD dropout, ex Deepmind, Tesla, GoogleX

Joined December 2018
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We raised $165M at a $1.15B valuation to stop doing demos. 2026 is about 1) deployment and 2) research. We will start shipping Memo with our new frontier models in a few months. Our series-B is led by Coatue, with Thomas Laffont joining the board. ->🧵
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Tony Zhao reposted
In Sep 2024, I left a job I loved to start @proceptionAI with one obsession: to give robots hands that actually work. 20 months. 20 people in Mountain View. A lot of Coke Zero. Today we ship.
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So much alignment in how we think about robotics, and that shared philosophy is what brings Sunday’s ML team together. Excited to build with you!
Personal update: I've joined @sundayrobotics. Two questions ran through my whole PhD: how to learn from scalable human data, and how to build general-purpose robots. Trying to answer them convinced me of one thing: general-purpose robots will never come from better models alone. It takes tight iteration across data, hardware, model, control, and evaluation. Every loop you can shorten matters. My first dinner with @tonyzzhao and @chichengcc turned into a four-hour conversation. I walked away realizing how much we saw eye to eye: scale the data, think full-stack, start from the problem you want to solve instead of the idea you want to win. So getting to work at Sunday is a dream come true, a place to solve generalization with the full breadth of human data and system-level thinking, and keep chasing the questions I care most about. After my first month in, two things stand out: Sunday’s full-stack team iterates unbelievably fast, and the energy when everyone is aligned on the same vision is electric. This speed and energy is exactly why what used to feel impossible now feels close. Home robots, the frontier physical AI in the hands of ordinary people, were long seen as a distant dream . At Sunday, I watch this dream take shape every day. I'm convinced there's real research-market fit here: foundation models and home robots point toward the same north star, generalization, not specialization, because every home is different. Excited for the zero-to-one moment ahead.
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We’ve also grown our ML team 5× over the past six months. A lot more to come soon.
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he leaked our flagship task.. just like that
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Tony Zhao reposted
really excited to have got this out! here's an uncut, real-time video of our policy folding a cardboard box
Introducing ABC: open data, training, and infrastructure for robotics. We release the largest teleop dataset to date, and extensively investigate design decisions, pretraining, and post-training techniques. @arthurallshire @Cinnabar233 @adamrasb @redstone_hong @davidrmcall
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So cool. Congrats @raffi_hotter !
We recently obtained the highest-resolution 3D images of the human brain ever taken from outside the skull. This is the first look. Introducing Aleph, a research lab building brain interfaces for the telepathic future. (1/n)
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Reviews of the original ALOHA paper (2023): "It is very hard to find any strength in a paper that forgets about 50 year of development of robotics... the authors are referred to any good book of control theory or robotics to integrate their background... the solution proposed is just damaging the ongoing discussion on low cost-high performance systems."
PPO: rejected from NIPS 2017
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The original post 3 years ago - learning these tasks with 15min of demos is still quite relevant..! x.com/tonyzzhao/status/16403…
How can robots acquire fine-grained manipulation skills? Introducing ACT: Action Chunking with Transformers 🤖 Key idea: Imitation, but predict actions in chunks instead of one at a time. Here are results with only ~15min of demonstrations, running on low-cost arms:
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Lots of updates to come in the coming months!
1,709 → 72,000 sq. ft. in two years Welcome to Sunday’s new HQ.
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Tony Zhao reposted
I love having artists on the team
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Deployment is what matters. Deployment is not solved.
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Tony Zhao reposted
Gave a sun hat to Memo since our new office is so sunny
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Unprepared quick-fire questions is almost the most fun!
Sunday Robotics raised $165M to deploy their home robot Memo, but the more interesting story is how they got here. Instead of starting with a robot, they started by putting sensor-equipped gloves into real homes to capture how people actually do chores like dishes, laundry, and cleaning. That data is now what powers Memo. Here’s my conversation with Co-founder & CEO Tony Zhao. 1:34 Why does the world need Sunday? 2:07 What does Sunday get right? 2:37 Hardest part of building a home robot? 3:12 What does the future of robotics look like? 4:54 What is Memo? 5:23 Biggest misconception about robotics? 5:54 What does a successful launch look like? 6:29 $1B valuation pre-launch. How do you handle it? 8:12 What do people underestimate about Sunday? 10:34 Favorite consumer hardware product @tonyzzhao @sundayrobotics
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Tony Zhao reposted
@sundayrobotics went from @tonyzzhao and @chichengcc in an apartment to 70 people, 1000 memory developers and over $1B valuation in just 18 months. Tony breaks down the nuts and bolts of building a fullstack robotics company from scratch on this week's episode of Good Company 🔩 @conviction
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The first operators at AI startups face a strange loneliness. We come with wild ideas, but operate in small teams with few peers for sanity checks. We’re often the only person in the room who does what we do. @brainstub and I are fixing that. Introducing Bread Butter: An intimate dinner series for operators shipping AI.👇
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Tony Zhao reposted
We designed Olto to be the ultimate bike lane vehicle. Two passengers. 40 miles of range. Cargo capacity. Theft proof. No license, no registration, no insurance. $3,495, about a quarter of what the average used car costs. Bike-lane legal in 50 states. Olto is now shipping nationwide. To celebrate, we’re launching our Spring Campaign featuring ~100 New Yorkers from all walks of life. It goes live today around NYC and on the internet. We’re very excited for Olto to be in the world and for all kinds of people to make it a part of their lives. Oh the places you will go.
Olto is now shipping to customers in the United States. We designed Olto to be a new kind of vehicle, a better way for everyone to get around. To celebrate its launch, we photographed almost a hundred New Yorkers on Olto in a single day. Friends, neighbors, strangers, NYC Icons. All shot against a white backdrop, each showing how they'll make Olto their own.
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Tony Zhao reposted
We’re hiring in-house Memory Developers to shape how Memo perceives and interacts with the world. The Role: 📍 On-site & flexible (3–5 days/week). 👟 Record high-quality task demos (e.g. folding t-shirts, arranging shoes, etc). 🧠 Beta-test new hardware and software. 📈 High growth potential into management. Apply below if you’re detail-oriented, curious about AI, and interested in contributing to the future of autonomous home robotics.
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Tony Zhao reposted
Tony Zhao from Sunday Robotics goes rapid fire. 10 questions. 20 seconds each. Drops Monday 4/20. @tonyzzhao @sundayrobotics
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Tony Zhao reposted
Autonomous logistics is a game-changer for elderly communities that aren't as mobile and often can't access the same services as the rest of us. Grandma is living in the future!🧓🚀
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Tony Zhao reposted
Memo on @Nasdaq today!
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