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Robot hand company settles Tesla trade secret suit and announces $11M raise
Jay Li, former technical lead on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot program, was sued by Tesla last year for allegedly taking trade secrets to start his robotics company, Proception. After months of legal battles, he reached a settlement, and Tesla dismissed the lawsuit earlier this month. Li now focuses on solving the challenge of making robotic hands mimic human dexterity. Proception announced Monday an $11 million seed round led by First Round Capital, with Y Combinator and BoxGroup participating. The company is shipping its first batch of “high-dexterity robotic hands” to researchers and robotics firms, and opening wider orders. Li aims to become the leading hand supplier for companies that lack resources to develop dexterous manipulation in-house. Li believes the industry underinvests in robotic hands, a challenge even Tesla CEO Elon Musk has highlighted. While experts like Northwestern’s Kevin Lynch estimate it will take a decade for robotic hands to match human functionality, Li thinks Proception can accelerate progress through a novel data-collection method. Most companies use teleoperators with VR headsets to train robots, but Li notes this lacks tactile feedback and is limited by robot availability. Proception’s solution: a sensor-laden glove worn by human testers (with a headset) to capture hand interaction data without involving a robot. The same glove acts as the robotic hand’s sensor-packed “skin.” The hand has 22 degrees of freedom and multiple joints per finger for dexterous motions, enabling finer, task-specific data collection that can scale. First Round partner Bill Trenchard cited Proception’s combination of sophisticated hardware and scalable data as key to his investment, calling dexterous manipulation “the last mile” of humanoid robotics. He also praised Li’s composure during the Tesla lawsuit. Li remains confident, noting Tesla’s litigation department was tough but that Proception might ultimately partner with his former employer.