Genesis AI

Robotics · Artificial Intelligence

Launch

Genesis AI launches GENE-26.5, a full-stack model with human-shaped robot hands

The startup bet that matching hand anatomy to humans, not building simpler grippers, unlocks vastly more usable training data.

• Genesis AI unveiled GENE-26.5, its first foundation model for robotics, paired with an in-house-designed robotic hand sized and shaped like a human hand.
• Founded by CEO Zhou Xian and president Théophile Gervet (a former Mistral AI research scientist), Genesis builds full-stack AI and hardware for general-purpose robots.
• Unlike the two-finger grippers common in robotics, Genesis's five-fingered hand narrows the 'embodiment gap' with real-world human tasks, per the company.
• A companion sensor-equipped glove lets people generate matching training data by wearing it during everyday tasks like lab work or manufacturing.
• Demo tasks included cracking eggs, slicing tomatoes, making smoothies, playing piano, and solving a Rubik's Cube, a standard robotics dexterity benchmark.
• Genesis emerged from stealth in July 2025 with a $105M seed round co-led by Eclipse and Khosla Ventures, with backers including Eric Schmidt and Xavier Niel.
• Zhou Xian said Genesis plans to soon release its first general-purpose robot, a full-body system rather than just the hand.
• By owning both the model and the hand hardware, Genesis is betting that human-shaped embodiment, not just bigger models, is the real bottleneck to useful robot data at scale.