Daxo Robotics
"Radical Dexterity"
Philadelphia-based robotics startup building ultra-dexterous robotic hands with 120 actuators using soft robotics and tendon-driven actuation for physical AI.
Daxo Robotics is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based robotics company founded in 2023 by Tom Zhang, a Penn Engineering PhD and alumnus of the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. The company focuses on developing highly dexterous robotic hands designed for physical AI applications, operating under the philosophy of embracing mechanical complexity rather than minimizing it.
The flagship product is a dexterous robotic hand featuring 120 actuators per hand, making it among the most actuated robotic hands ever built. The design uses soft robotics principles combined with tendon-driven actuation to achieve high degrees of freedom and high-dimensionality motion. This architecture allows the hand to perform tasks requiring fine manipulation, such as pen twirling or handwriting, with human-like precision. The system is designed to work with AI control systems and modern machine learning-based motion policies.
Daxo V2 hand was scheduled for commercial launch in Q3 2026, following a limited prototype release in fall 2025 with a build cost of approximately 1200 USD. The company is affiliated with the GRASP Lab ecosystem at Penn and exhibited at the Automate Show. Target environments for the Daxo hand include industrial automation, agriculture, and logistics, where current robotic end-effectors lack the dexterity to handle irregularly shaped or delicate objects.
The company appears on Crunchbase under the name Daxo Industries and has received backing from Unshackled Ventures. Founder Tom Zhang argues that the robotics industry has historically constrained robot designs to predictable, low-DOF systems to maintain controllability, and that genuine manipulation capability at scale requires high-dimensional, complex hands capable of generalizing across diverse tasks. Rather than reducing the number of degrees of freedom, Daxo adds redundancy to make the hand more robust and adaptable under AI control.
The broader context driving Daxo development is the rapid growth of physical AI: large vision-language models and reinforcement learning policies are being adapted to control robot bodies, and effective deployment requires hands with sufficient dexterity to match the diversity of real-world manipulation tasks. Daxo is positioning its end-effector platform at the intersection of advanced soft robotics hardware and the emerging physical AI software stack, targeting customers in manufacturing, agricultural picking, and warehousing where dexterous manipulation is a current bottleneck.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
Daxo Dexterous Hand V2
- Model: V2
- Launch Year: 2026
120-actuator tendon-driven robotic hand with soft robotics architecture designed for AI-controlled dexterous manipulation.
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Contact Daxo Robotics
WEBSITE
https://www.daxo-robotics.com/HEADQUARTERS
United States
Company Facts
Founded
2023
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
-
Funding Total
-
