Figure AI vs Sanctuary AI
A side-by-side comparison of Figure AI and Sanctuary AI, two Robotics tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
Figure AI
RoboticsHumanoid robots powered by Helix, an in-house vision-language-action model.
View Figure AISanctuary AI
RoboticsPhoenix, a general-purpose humanoid robot driven by the Carbon AI control system.
View Sanctuary AIAt a glance
| Attribute | Figure AI | Sanctuary AI |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Robotics | Robotics |
| Pricing | PAID | PAID |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Local | Local |
| Platforms | API | API |
| Model support | Self-contained (on-device) | Self-contained (on-device) |
| Vendor (differs) | Figure AI | Sanctuary AI |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
Figure AI
Exited its OpenAI deal to own the full stack — Helix runs onboard, so hardware and AI are built end-to-end in-house.
- Proprietary Helix VLA model
- Full-stack hardware + AI
- Real pilots (BMW manufacturing)
- Figure 03 targets the home
- Not a buyable product yet
- Capital-intensive, long timelines
- General-purpose autonomy unproven at scale
Sanctuary AI
Carbon's hybrid stack — symbolic reasoning plus LLMs and RL — cuts Phoenix task onboarding to under 24 hours.
- Highly dexterous hands
- Hybrid Carbon control system
- New tasks taught in under a day
- Explainable reasoning layer
- Not generally available; enterprise/pilot
- Narrow deployed task range so far
- Capital-intensive hardware
When to pick which
Both cover Robot foundation model and Dexterous manipulation.
Pick Figure AI if you need Vision-language-action and Bipedal locomotion.
- Vision-language-action (primary capability)
- Bipedal locomotion (secondary capability)
Pick Sanctuary AI if you need Imitation learning.
- Imitation learning (secondary capability)