TELEXISTENCE inc.

TELEXISTENCE Inc. (TX) is a Tokyo-based robotics company founded in 2017 to design, manufacture, and operate robots for environments outside the factory. It develops hardware, software, AI, and teleoperation technologies in-house, combining autonomous operation with remote human control. The company name derives from the "telexistence" concept proposed in 1980 by Dr. Susumu Tachi, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo and chairman of the company, which describes a human being able to act freely in a remote environment and the technical systems that enable it.

TX's product line has centered on retail and logistics tasks. In July 2020 it introduced Model-T, a remote-controlled robot for retail, at the Lawson Model-T Tokyo Port City Takeshiba store; Model-T has since been discontinued. In November 2021 the company announced TX SCARA, an AI robot for retail, first installed at the FamilyMart METI store, and from August 2022 began rolling it out to 300 FamilyMart stores across Japan. More recent work covers the TX Ghost robot for beverage shelf-stocking, an "Astra" humanoid with a Vision-Language-Action foundation model being developed with Seven-Eleven Japan, and a robotic motion dataset generation service produced by a dedicated motion-data facility.

The company positions itself as a physical AI company building foundational technology for robots operating in the real world, developing robot foundation models alongside purpose-built robot hardware and operations. It has worked with NVIDIA technologies including the Isaac GR00T robot foundation model and the DreamZero world action model, and joined the NVIDIA Cosmos Coalition to combine proprietary real-world operational data with synthetic data for pre-training and domain adaptation, using simulation and edge-GPU post-training to shorten sim-to-real deployment cycles.

Founding story

TELEXISTENCE Inc. was founded on January 23, 2017 by CEO Jin Tomioka and CTO Charith Fernando to commercialize the telexistence concept originally proposed in 1980 by Dr. Susumu Tachi, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo and the company's chairman. Building on Tachi's theoretical and experimental work, the company set out to develop telexistence robots, online remote-control robotics technologies, and a cloud communication module that transmits, accumulates, and analyzes visual, auditory, and tactile information.

Business model

TX designs, manufactures, and operates its own robots, delivering integrated systems that combine robot foundation models and other AI, purpose-built hardware, and ongoing operations, deployed at customer sites such as convenience store chains and logistics warehouses. It also sells robotics and cloud/data-analytics services based on telexistence technology, and from January 2026 offers a robotic motion dataset generation service producing datasets tailored to customer requirements.

Revenue derives from the development and sale of robots and related cloud and data-analytics services, deployment and operation of robots at customer sites, and a subscription-style dataset generation service with pre-orders opened in September 2025 ahead of a January 2026 launch.

Traction

By 2023 TX had deployed hundreds of its own robots in commercial environments outside factories; installation of TX SCARA into 300 FamilyMart stores across Japan began in August 2022. TX Ghost beverage shelf-stocking pilots are running at selected 7-Eleven stores in Tokyo, and a joint program with Seven-Eleven Japan targets deployment of the generative-AI humanoid "Astra" in Seven-Eleven stores. The company had raised roughly $41M in total by mid-2021 and a further $170M Series B in 2023, and its team members come from 25 different countries.

Latest developments

In July 2026 TX announced it would join the NVIDIA Cosmos Coalition to accelerate development of its own robot foundation models for humanoids in retail, logistics, and manufacturing. In June 2026 it published results from the AWS/NVIDIA/MassRobotics Physical AI Fellowship 2026, including a VLA-based single-policy autonomous manipulation demo on its humanoid robot and joint implementation with NVIDIA's DreamZero world model. In September 2025 it partnered with Seven-Eleven Japan on the generative-AI humanoid "Astra" and expanded TX Ghost beverage shelf-stocking pilots at 7-Eleven stores in Tokyo, and in August 2025 it announced a robotic motion dataset generation service launching January 2026 and won the Prime Minister's Award at the Japan Startup Awards 2025.