NEW DATA ACQUISITION: Axis enters the chat! Axis Robotics is a San Francisco startup founded in 2025. They build a data engine that generates robot-manipulation training data at scale through a crowd of contributors rather than its own robot fleet. It has four parts: - a task-generation engine that randomizes diverse atomic tasks - a browser-based simulation-teleoperation interface where anyone remotely drives a simulated arm to produce motion trajectories - a mobile app for zero-hardware egocentric real-world capture (i.e. filming a task with a phone) - and a processing pipeline that cleans trajectories, applies domain randomization and adds dense language annotation, with human-gated DAgger intervention loops. It packages the output as customized "Task Packages" sold to robot hardware makers, physical-AI model companies and industrial-automation firms (named partners include Booster Robotics, Manycore Tech, Feagine Robotics, Dexmal, Lotus Car, Geely Auto and SomaStacks). I find it interesting that two of its four components need no robot at all: a browser interface where anyone drives a simulated arm to produce trajectories, and a phone app for egocentric real-world capture with no rig. You do not need an ALOHA setup or a fleet, only a browser and a phone, which is what lets it claim a six-figure contributor base.