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The startup, Proception, is taking a unique approach to collecting training data to tackle one of the hardest problems in robotics: hands.
Jay Li doesn’t recommend getting sued by Tesla if you’re trying to get a startup off the ground. But he does think his company, Proception, might be better off for having endured the experience.
“I think it’s kind of like a resilience test, or pressure test,” he told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. “People say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
Li, who was a technical lead on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot program, was accused by his former employer last year of absconding with trade secrets to start Proception. But after months of trading legal blows, he finally reached a settlement with Tesla, which dismissed the lawsuit earlier this month. (Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.)
Now Li is free to tackle what he thinks is an even harder problem: making robot hands work like a human’s.
To help do that, Proception announced Monday that it has raised an $11 million seed round led by First Round Capital, with contributions from Y Combinator and early stage fund BoxGroup.
Proception also announced Monday that it is shipping the first batch of its “high-dexterity robotic hand” to “researchers and robotics companies,” while opening up to wider orders. The goal, Li said, is to become the top hand supplier to other companies that don’t want to spend the time or resources developing what’s known in the industry as “dextrous manipulation.”