Sanctuary AI, the Vancouver company known for the Phoenix humanoid, now sells something different. Since June 17, 2026, its main product is AI that runs on existing industrial robot arms from FANUC and Universal Robots, paired with custom grippers. Phoenix is no longer offered as a product. The company’s own hydraulic robotic hand is still “in development,” and it describes industrial humanoids as a future step, according to its solutions page.
The change came with a first commercial result and a new chief executive. Here’s what Sanctuary AI announced, what it sells now and what remains a plan.
The June 2026 strategy change
On June 17, 2026, Sanctuary AI announced that it would stop waiting for humanoid hardware to reach mass production and instead deploy its AI on commercial robot platforms already in factories. In the announcement, the company called this a hardware-agnostic approach that also lays groundwork for future industrial humanoids.
The proof it offered was one task at one customer: inserting flexible wire-harness plugs into parts moving on a conveyor, at a global Tier 1 automotive supplier. Sanctuary reported a task success rate above 99.5% at 2.54 seconds per plug, measured against the customer’s live production benchmarks. Its Physical AI page adds that the model was trained on 5.5 hours of teleoperation data. The customer is not named, and the figures come from Sanctuary rather than an independent test.
The company’s milestone page says that result led to its first commercial purchase order, a paid deployment with the same supplier, in 2026.
The CEO change
A day earlier, on June 16, 2026, Sanctuary’s board appointed chairman Daniel Friedmann as CEO, replacing James Wells. Friedmann ran the aerospace company MDA for nearly two decades and later led Carbon Engineering. The announcement doesn’t give a reason for the change.
What Sanctuary AI sells now
The company groups its work into four lines and labels each with a status.
- AI for industrial robot arms (now deploying): its models running on FANUC and Universal Robots arms, one-arm or two-arm, with custom low-DoF grippers, vacuum tools or off-the-shelf grippers. Sanctuary says its trained policies reach 99%+ success rates on the tasks it takes on, and it collects the task data with the customer.
- Hydraulic robotic hands (in development): a 17-degree-of-freedom hand in human form, driven by miniaturized hydraulics with tactile sensors. The hands page says pilot programs start “soon.” No price or ship date is published.
- Mobile manipulation with AMRs (piloting soon): autonomous mobile robots being trained in its lab.
- Industrial humanoids (future): Sanctuary says its AI will power later humanoids, without naming hardware or a date.
Target industries listed are automotive, electronics, high-volume manufacturing, warehousing and pharmaceutical logistics. There is no public price list. Companies send a commercial inquiry through the forms on those pages, choosing industrial arms, humanoid embodiment or robotic hands as the hardware of interest, plus an expected fleet size.
What happened to Phoenix
Phoenix was Sanctuary’s general-purpose humanoid, and the news archive still lists the eighth Phoenix generation, which the company described as a robot for high-quality data capture. The 2026 site uses Phoenix only as history. Its milestones note that in 2024 the same AI policy ran a task on both Phoenix and a Franka arm, which the company now presents as evidence that its software doesn’t depend on one body.
So if you are looking to buy or lease a Phoenix humanoid, there is no current offer on Sanctuary’s site. The company’s commercial pitch is software and integration for arms you may already own.
The hydraulic hand
Sanctuary has worked on hands since 2018. Its milestone page says it tried every major actuation approach across eight hardware generations from 2018 to 2024 and settled on miniaturized hydraulics, fitting 60 in-house proportional valves into a forearm-sized unit. In April 2026 it showed a simulation-trained in-hand rotation policy working on the real hand without extra training. The 17-DoF next-generation hand is its 2026 development target. In May 2026, the Japanese materials maker Zeon invested in Sanctuary and agreed to develop elastomer materials for the hand.
Is Sanctuary AI public?
No. Sanctuary Cognitive Systems Corporation is a private company, so there’s no stock to buy. Outside investment so far comes through private rounds such as Zeon’s venture arm.
Sanctuary’s move mirrors a wider pattern: several humanoid makers now sell software, arms or wheeled robots while legged humanoids stay in pilots. Our humanoid robot companies guide sorts who sells, who pilots and who is still building, and Skild AI is another company selling a robot “brain” rather than a body.