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Genesis AI<\/a>, a startup that raised a $105 million seed round to build foundational AI for robotics, has unveiled its first model, GENE-26.5, and it comes with surprise hands. In a demo video, the company showcased various advanced tasks performed by a set of robotic hands it has designed in-house.<\/p>\n \u201cThe model has always been the goal, because a better model means better intelligence,\u201d Genesis co-founder and CEO Zhou Xian told TechCrunch. But the company soon realized that it needed control over the hardware. \u201cSo we decided to go full stack,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Other well-funded companies operate at the intersection of AI and robotics \u2014 such as Physical Intelligence<\/a> and Skild AI<\/a>. Zhou also acknowledged that \u201cthere\u2019s probably 50 or 100 robotic hand companies out there.\u201d But he and his co-founder Th\u00e9ophile Gervet hope that building their own will give them the upper hand.<\/p>\n The key difference is that Genesis\u2019 hand has the same size and shape as a human hand \u2014 rather than the two-finger grippers many robotics companies have been using \u2014 reducing the gap with real-world conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat lets us collect a lot more data than was previously possible, to train a model that can do many more tasks,\u201d said Gervet, a former research scientist at Mistral AI who is now Genesis\u2019 president.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of all the physical manipulation tasks showcased in the video below, Gervet\u2019s personal favorite is cooking, because it proves that the robot has been able to complete a long series of difficult tasks, such as cracking an egg and slicing a tomato. But Genesis has also tasked its robots with preparing smoothies, playing the piano, and solving Rubik\u2019s cube \u2014 a robotics gimmick<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n