Phoenix

Retail back-of-house pilot

In April 2023 Sanctuary AI ran a one-week deployment with Canadian Tire in Langley, British Columbia. Phoenix ran 110 discrete tasks during the pilot, including picking, packing, tagging, folding, cleaning, labeling, and receiving. Sanctuary framed the pilot as a proof point for general-purpose task variety rather than a per-task throughput demonstration, and did not publish success rates or completion times for individual task categories.

Automotive parts manufacturing

In October 2024 Sanctuary announced a commercial partnership with Magna International, one of the largest automotive suppliers in North America, to deploy Phoenix on manufacturing lines. The initial scope covers material handling and sub-assembly tasks in Magna facilities. Sanctuary has not disclosed the number of units placed, the specific plant locations, or the task list under the Magna program.

Hydraulic-hand tactile manipulation

Phoenix carries hydraulic hands rated at 5 millinewton (mN) tactile sensitivity — roughly one-tenth the force of holding a raisin. Each hand carries seven tactile cells. Sanctuary positions the hand as the platform's core differentiator for tasks that require sub-gram grip modulation, such as textile handling, small-parts sub-assembly, and food-adjacent packaging. The 41 total degrees of freedom are heavily concentrated in the hands, which is where the majority of the platform's engineering investment sits.

Carbon AI as the training substrate

Sanctuary runs its Carbon AI cognitive architecture on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. Carbon combines symbolic reasoning with learned components; Sanctuary has stated that pilot deployments feed data back into Carbon for continued training. The Azure integration was announced in a 2023 partnership disclosure. Sanctuary has not published Carbon's model size, training corpus size, or independent benchmark results.

Enterprise-only market posture

Sanctuary sells Phoenix into enterprise pilots and partnerships rather than through a published price list. The stated pricing model is contact-only. This maps to a slow-rollout strategy focused on multi-quarter partnerships (Canadian Tire, Magna) rather than volume shipment. Sanctuary has not disclosed a public unit-count target or a shipping year for a commercial product line.

Sanctuary Cognitive Systems, early Delta prototypes — 2018-2022

Sanctuary AI was founded in 2018 in Vancouver, Canada by Geordie Rose (co-founder of D-Wave Systems and Kindred), Suzanne Gildert, and Olivia Norton. Early prototypes were mobile manipulator platforms under the internal Delta name, focused on teleoperation training data collection. These platforms were not commercial products; Sanctuary used them internally to build the Carbon AI training corpus.

Phoenix Gen 6 — May 2023

First public Phoenix reveal. 170 cm, 70 kg, 20 degrees of freedom in each hand. Sanctuary positioned Gen 6 as the first version intended for external pilots, and the Canadian Tire deployment followed within weeks. Sanctuary did not publish full spec sheets for Gen 6 at the time of reveal; several numbers appeared only in subsequent press coverage.

Phoenix Gen 7 — April 2024

Sanctuary announced Gen 7 with reduced hardware cost, longer runtime versus Gen 6 (specific figures not published), and improved uptime. Gen 7 kept the 41-DoF profile and the hydraulic hand architecture. Sanctuary described Gen 7 as an internal-development platform used to reduce build cost ahead of a commercial rollout, not as a customer-shipping generation.

Magna partnership announcement — October 2024

First named commercial partnership. Sanctuary and Magna International announced Phoenix deployment on Magna manufacturing lines. The announcement did not commit to a specific unit count, deployment date, or contract length. Sanctuary framed the partnership as a scaling milestone rather than a shipment.

Ongoing development status — Through 2026

Sanctuary's status remains 'development' rather than 'shipping' in its own materials. Financing continues (multiple rounds through 2023-2024 including funding from Bell Canada, InBC, and the Canadian federal Strategic Innovation Fund). Sanctuary has not published a target date for the shift from pilot deployments to a commercially available product with a price and lead time.

Canadian Tire, Langley, British Columbia

One-week pilot in April 2023 covering 110 tasks across picking, packing, tagging, folding, cleaning, labeling, and receiving. This is the most publicly documented Phoenix deployment. Sanctuary published a follow-up video and blog post; no formal per-task success-rate report was released.

Source: Sanctuary AI, Canadian Tire Phoenix Pilot, 2023

Magna International manufacturing facilities

Announced October 2024. Phoenix deployment on Magna manufacturing lines for material handling and sub-assembly. Sanctuary has not disclosed the specific plants, unit counts, or timeline; Magna has stated only that the partnership is 'commercial' in nature.

Source: Sanctuary AI, Magna Partnership Announcement, October 2024

Vancouver, BC — Sanctuary AI headquarters

Sanctuary operates its primary engineering and manufacturing facility in Vancouver. Internal Phoenix units run there for development, teleoperation data collection, and Carbon AI training. This is a first-party site rather than a customer deployment.

Not shipping — status remains 'development'

Sanctuary categorizes Phoenix as a development platform, not a shipping product. There is no public price, no published lead time, and no order book. Enterprise engagement runs through direct partnership discussions. A buyer looking to deploy in 2026 cannot get Phoenix on a purchase order or a lease contract without a bilateral partnership agreement.

Undisclosed battery specification

Sanctuary has not published battery capacity in kWh, runtime, or charge time for Phoenix. Public materials describe hardware improvements between Gen 6 and Gen 7 that include runtime gains, but the underlying numbers have not been released. A duty-cycle analysis against competitors (Apollo, Digit, Figure 02) is not possible from public data.

Slow maximum walking speed

Phoenix rates 0.83 m/s maximum walking speed — under 3 km/h. This is below Agility Digit (roughly 1.6 m/s), Figure 02, and Apptronik Apollo. For deployments that require moving between task stations across a large floor, Phoenix loses time in transit. Sanctuary has not published a running mode or a faster-walking configuration.

No ROS or ROS 2 support, no public SDK

Phoenix runs on Carbon AI, a proprietary stack integrated with Microsoft Azure. There is no public ROS bridge, no published SDK, and no third-party developer program. Research groups and integrators that want open middleware stay on Digit, Unitree platforms, or Boston Dynamics Atlas Research. Sanctuary has not stated whether a developer program is planned.

Hydraulic hands add maintenance surface

The hydraulic hand design that gives Phoenix its 5 mN tactile resolution also introduces maintenance considerations that competitor tendon-driven or geared hands do not carry — hydraulic fluid, seals, and pressure lines. Sanctuary has not published mean-time-between-service figures for the hands or a field-serviceability plan. In pilot contexts this is not visible; at scale it becomes a component of total cost of ownership.

vs. Apptronik Apollo

Apollo is Phoenix's closest peer by mission: enterprise general-purpose humanoid, similar height (Apollo 173 cm vs Phoenix 170 cm), similar weight (Apollo 72.6 kg vs Phoenix 70 kg), same 25 kg payload rating. The split is deployment maturity. Apollo has publicly named partnerships with Mercedes-Benz and GXO Logistics with unit counts and pilot pricing on the record. Phoenix has Canadian Tire (2023 one-week pilot) and Magna (2024 partnership announcement) with no unit counts disclosed. Apollo runs modular battery swap and quotes runtime; Phoenix does not publish battery specifications. On hand design, Phoenix's hydraulic 5 mN tactile hand is more sensitive than Apollo's electric hand, but Apollo's shipping cadence is ahead. For a buyer choosing today, Apollo is the more procurable platform; Phoenix is the platform with the more distinctive manipulation capability.

vs. Figure 02

Figure 02 shares the enterprise-humanoid segment with Phoenix but sits in a different funding and shipping stage. Figure 02 stands at 168 cm and 70 kg — nearly identical body dimensions to Phoenix — with 25 kg payload, 300-minute runtime, and BMW Spartanburg as a named deployment. Figure 02 runs Helix VLA (Figure's in-house model) versus Sanctuary's Carbon AI. Figure ships hardware and has published production data; Sanctuary has not moved out of the development category. The distinguishing spec on Phoenix is the hydraulic tactile hand — Figure 02 uses a 16-DoF electric hand with different tactile characteristics. Figure has priced its next-generation platform (Figure 03) around $20,000 for a home variant; Sanctuary has no public price at any tier.

vs. Agility Digit

Digit is the enterprise-humanoid comparison for logistics workloads. Digit stands at 175 cm and 65 kg, walks at roughly 1.6 m/s (nearly double Phoenix's 0.83 m/s), and rates 16 kg payload against Phoenix's 25 kg. Digit ships under Robots-as-a-Service contracts (GXO Logistics is the named large-scale customer) with pricing on the record around $30 per operating hour. Digit has ROS 2 support and an Arc cloud SDK; Phoenix has neither. Digit's manipulator is simpler than Phoenix's hydraulic hand — Digit's grippers are optimized for tote handling rather than sub-gram tactile work. The two platforms compete for adjacent but distinct use cases: Digit for volume tote movement, Phoenix for precision manipulation. A warehouse tote line favors Digit; a small-parts sub-assembly cell that requires 5 mN grip modulation favors Phoenix — if Phoenix is available.