Phoenix (Gen 8)

Overview

Phoenix Gen 8 is Sanctuary AI's eighth-generation humanoid robot, announced in January 2025. It uses a wheeled base rather than bipedal legs and is built around Carbon, Sanctuary's proprietary AI control system. As of mid-2026, Sanctuary AI has pivoted toward a hardware-agnostic strategy, licensing Carbon for deployment on third-party robotic hardware.

Phoenix Gen 8 stands 170 cm tall, weighs 70 kg, and has a payload capacity of 25 kg. Each hand has 20 degrees of freedom and uses proprietary miniaturised hydraulic valves — not electric actuation — for power density in a compact form factor. Tactile sensors in the finger pads use 7-cell micro-barometer arrays capable of detecting forces down to 5 millinewtons, per Sanctuary AI's February 2025 tactile sensor announcement. Walking speed is approximately 4.8 km/h. Full-body degree-of-freedom count and compute specifications are not publicly disclosed by Sanctuary AI.

Gen 8 uses a wheeled base rather than bipedal legs. Sanctuary AI stated this was a deliberate decision based on customer feedback that bipedal legs are insufficiently robust for the torso strength required for precision industrial work. The generation was designed to improve data capture — with wider field of view, enhanced telemetry, updated sensor suite, and faster manufacturing — while reducing bill-of-materials costs. Gen 8 arrived less than eight months after Gen 7.

Carbon, Sanctuary AI's proprietary AI control system, combines symbolic reasoning, large language models, deep learning, and reinforcement learning. Sanctuary states it enables autonomous task execution from natural language instructions with explainable and auditable task plans, and claims new tasks can be automated in under 24 hours. As of mid-2026, Sanctuary AI has pivoted toward a hardware-agnostic strategy — licensing its Physical AI software for deployment on third-party robotic hardware, not exclusively on Phoenix. Confirmed partners include Magna International and Microsoft. No public pricing has been disclosed.

Specifications

Sensors

Software