Y Combinator S26 · Robotics data infrastructure
A new 100% margin revenue stream from operations you already run.
Praxis turns the task footage your workforce generates every day into high-fidelity humanoid robotics training data — and pays you for it. Zero upfront cost, zero disruption to your crews.
Rendering earth
24
Countries engaged
A robotics company solving the bottleneck in front of every robotics company.
Praxis is a Y Combinator S26 robotics company building the world's largest network of real-task training data. We install lightweight capture hardware into workforces that already exist, annotate what they produce, and sell the resulting datasets to frontier AI labs — sharing the revenue with the businesses that host collection.
Operating footprint
We service frontier labs across warehouse, assembly, logistics, packaging and manufacturing sites, with live or contracted collection in 5 countries across 3 regions and 3,650 workers enrolled across 14 sites. A further 18 countries are in the pipeline, and utility and industrial field services are wide open.
More about the company and the teamThe opportunity
Data is the biggest bottleneck in robotics.
Robots are trained on data
Humanoids learn from real task footage — egocentric first-person video, and teleoperation data captured alongside haptic gloves. Nothing about the current generation of models works without it.
Datasets don't exist at scale
Diverse, high-fidelity datasets for humanoid robotics are not available at the volume frontier labs need. The corpus that exists today is narrow, repetitive, and mostly synthetic.
Labs are paying for it now
Frontier AI labs are well capitalized and competing for the same scarce supply, bidding up the price of real task data. Demand is outpacing supply today, not eventually.
Task data demand is outpacing supply
What makes a dataset valuable
Three drivers set the price of every hour.
The more varied the data, the more valuable it becomes.
Where the data is collected
Country of origin is the single biggest driver of value. US data commands the most demand because of commercial pull and US-specific products and services.
Length & complexity of the task
Long, multi-step tasks teach a robot sequencing and judgment — not just a motion. Complexity compounds value.
Diversity of the dataset
Footage spanning geographies and industries generalizes. We are deliberately industry- and country-agnostic for exactly this reason.
Three steps. Zero disruption to current operations.
Praxis converts latent task footage into annotated robotics training data and sells it into a market that is already bidding. Open any step for the detail.
Footage is priced, tagged, and paid within days
Capture to training data
What the footage looks like, and what it becomes.
The same seconds of one session, side by side — capture on the left, the structured output on the right.
Input
Unstructured first-person video of real work
Process
30 fps annotation, PII redaction, quality control
Output
Structured, labelled task data licensed to frontier labs
Three hardware tiers, one pipeline, and a hard line around your IP.
Every tier is paid for and replaced by Praxis. Fidelity climbs with worker burden, so most partners start at tier one and move up on the task categories that justify it.
Paid for, shipped, and replaced by Praxis. Hardware plugs into any smartphone.
Tier 01
Smart glasses headmount
Egocentric video from a sub-10mm frame. Clears hard hats and arc-flash PPE, so it drops into regulated environments without a safety review of the work itself.
- Capture
- First-person video
- Frame
- Sub-10mm
- PPE
- Hard hat + arc-flash safe
- Worker burden
- Minimal
- Best starting point for a first pilot — highest worker acceptance, fastest to deploy across a large crew.
- Placeholder: drop the real headmount scan into /public/models and set `model` on this tier.
How data is collected, uploaded, annotated & secured
Collection
Workers record dexterous manipulation during normal jobs. Hardware plugs into any smartphone — iOS or Android.
Upload
Two routes, your choice: direct to cloud, or on-prem hard drives that never touch an outside network.
Annotation & QC
30 frames per second annotated by our research team using proprietary software, then quality-controlled before pricing.
We are not interested in trade secrets
We do not film trade secrets or IP, and we delete any footage on request — no questions, no retention window.
Privacy and security are enforced automatically
Faces, screens, license plates, and documents are detected and blurred or removed before storage. PII redaction is automatic, not a manual pass.
Fully customizable to your operation
Collection scope, task types, and reporting cadence are tailored to match how your sites already run.
Cash flows on day one, then tooling you could not have built from the same footage.
The commercial structure is deliberately simple: a fixed rate for every hour of accepted task data, per worker, multiplied across everyone enrolled. No cost basis to recover, so the margin is yours.
Unit economics
Rate per verified hour
A fixed rate for every hour of accepted task data, per worker — negotiated with the lab, then with you.
Hours × workers enrolled
Multiplied across every worker capturing data on the job. Enrollment is the only lever you control.
Cash flows to your business
A new revenue stream with no cost basis. Cash comes in as soon as the contract begins.
How the contract gets there
- 01
Shop annotated pilot footage to all AI labs
A short pilot produces annotated footage we take to the entire buy side, not a single counterparty.
- 02
Choose the best contract
We run the negotiation and select on rate, volume commitment, and term — then hold the commercial relationship.
- 03
Bring the contract to you
The deal comes back as a negotiated rate per verified hour, structured as a revenue share on accepted data.
Revenue model — illustrative
InteractiveVerified hours / month
12,990
Contract value / month
$233,820
Your royalty / month
$116,910
Your royalty / year
$1.40M
Illustrative only. Rates are set per contract and depend on country of origin, task complexity, and dataset diversity — the three drivers of dataset value. Real pricing comes back with your pilot scope.
A new revenue stream
A royalty on every accepted hour of data, with zero upfront cost and no disruption to your crews. Royalty income can offset labor, R&D, and other operating costs.
Efficiency & training dashboards
The same footage powers internal tooling: digital twins of your operations, surfaced safety and compliance risks, and training curricula built from how your best people actually work.
First in line on robotics
A direct line to frontier labs puts maturing robots and automation on your floor first. Your data pipeline becomes your automation pipeline — and you keep all the option value.
Partner dashboards
What you get back, beyond the royalty.
Live, interactive versions of these ship with the partnership. Frames below are structural placeholders.
Efficiency & Security Command Center
3D digital twins of your operations — optimize layouts, surface risks, run what-if scenarios without touching production.
Production efficiency
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Throughput
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OEE
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On-time delivery
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Safety incidents
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Equipment uptime
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Learning & Development Hub
Your footage, turned into role-based curricula and microlearning modules with your L&D team.
Training modules
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Active learners
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Completion rate
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Knowledge retention
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Skill proficiency
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Safety incidents
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First In Line Deployment Platform
Track robots maturing from frontier labs onto your floor first, alongside the annotated data lakehouse feeding them.
Concepts
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In progress
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Piloting
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Validation
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Production ready
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Revenue earned
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Where collection already runs — and what comes out of it.
We are servicing frontier labs across warehouse, residential, agricultural, and industrial sites today. Utility and industrial field services are next, and wide open. Open any environment for the pilot detail.
Next
Utility and industrial field services
Wide open. No meaningful dataset exists for this work today.