Watch: Inside Foundation’s Humanoid Factory and the Anatomy of a "War Machine"

Foundation Robotics features in two new videos that provide the most intimate look yet at the Phantom MK1 and the company's next-generation "alien technology" hands. However, beneath the polished visuals lies a complex corporate lineage and a "dual-use" strategy that continues to rattle the robotics industry.

Inside Robo Factory 1

In a new feature by CoreMemory, Foundation CEO Sankaet Pathak leads a tour of "Robo Factory 1," the company’s San Francisco design headquarters. The video shows a surprisingly manual assembly process.

The Phantom MK1 is composed of approximately 500 unique parts, with Pathak highlighting that while 30% are sourced from China, the remainder comes from a global supply chain including the US, Mexico, Israel, and South Korea. Key assembly steps shown include:

• Actuator Assembly: Technicians manually press ring pins into housing units to build the custom cycloidal gearboxes.
• Structural Integration: The "shin" of the robot features titanium rods designed to withstand the high-vibration environment of bipedal walking .
• Sensing: The head integrates six cameras to provide a near-360-degree field of view, which the company claims is essential for both task performance and safety .

Interestingly, this cinematic tour avoids the overt military rhetoric Pathak has embraced in other forums. Instead, it frames the robot as a tool to liberate humans from a "screenless world" where machines handle the interface between physical tools .

The Boardwalk Legacy: Buying a "Moat"

The similarities between the Phantom MK1 and the Boardwalk Robotics "Alex" platform are not coincidental. Foundation Robotics formally acquired Boardwalk Robotics in August 2024.

Boardwalk, a spinoff from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), had spent years perfecting the cycloidal actuator technology that now serves as Foundation’s technical moat. These actuators provide:

• High Efficiency: Claimed 90-95% energy efficiency compared to 50-60% in traditional harmonic drives.
• Ruggedness: Unlike fragile strain wave gears, cycloidal drives use rolling elements that are highly resistant to shock loads.
• Backdrivability: The low-friction design allows the robot to "feel" external forces, enabling safer human interaction and more precise torque control.

IHMC continues to develop a separate, fully bipedal research robot also named "Alex".

Engineering the "Alien Technology" Hand

Foundation's second video, released today, focuses on the "rabbit hole" of robotic manipulation. The lead hand engineer, Andrea, describes their current Phantom hand as little more than a "gripper masquerading as a hand," featuring only two coupled joints per finger .

The company's future "Mach 2" hand aims for anatomical accuracy:

• Tendon-Driven Design: Moving the actuators into the forearm allows the fingers to remain thin and nimble, mimicking human musculature
• Actuation Density: The new prototype features 24 motors (representing muscles) and a complex network of flexor and extensor tendons .
• Bio-Mimicry: By studying human dissections, the team is implementing DIP, PIP, and MCP joints to enable abduction and adduction—the ability to spread fingers apart to grasp spherical objects.

The Path to Thousands of Units

Despite the "craftsmanship" feel of the factory video, Pathak remains committed to an aggressive, almost "insane" manufacturing roadmap. Foundation has previously said that they aim to produce thousands of robots in 2026.

For a startup still hand-soldering motor controllers and manually pressing pins, scaling to five-figure production in such a short time would require a transition from "Robo Factory 1" to a massive, automated industrial operation—all while navigating the financial shadow of Pathak’s previous venture, Synapse.

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Watch the Features

Inside the Factory:

The Future of Manipulation: