Buying guide
AEON vs Phoenix in 2026
Comparing 2 humanoid robots across availability, pricing, capabilities, and verified deployments. Current as of 2026.
| Attribute | ||
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Hexagon | Sanctuary AI |
| Form factor | humanoid | humanoid |
| Maturity | pilot | pilot |
| Autonomy | — | — |
| Availability | internal-onlyenterprise | announced-no-dateannounced |
| Price | Not announced | Not announced |
| Capability claims | — | — |
| Brain |
|
|
| Verified deployments | 1BMW Group | 1Magna International |
| Privacy practices | — | — |
| Sources on file | 5 | 14 |
Editorial summaries
AEON
Hexagon's AEON is an industrial humanoid robot built for factory work such as assembly lines and high-voltage EV-battery manufacturing, developed with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and the Swiss actuator maker maxon. It carries 22 sensors and self-swapping batteries (about 23 seconds) for around-the-clock operation, with a walking speed near 2.5 meters per second. DEPLOY records it at pilot maturity with one verified deployment, at BMW Group Plant Leipzig: the honest counterpoint to aggregator 'humanoids are working in factories at scale' framing, this is a verified pilot, not commercial-at-scale. As industrial equipment sold to manufacturers, it has no consumer price.
Phoenix
Phoenix is an emerging-stage research humanoid from Sanctuary AI, the Canadian company (Geordie Rose, Suzanne Gildert) pursuing a cognitive-architecture approach distinct from foundation-model peers. There is no consumer product, price, or availability on record; the editorial position is honest-absence.
Common questions
- What is the difference between AEON and Phoenix?
- AEON and Phoenix are both humanoid robots on the DEPLOY registry. They differ in maker, maturity, price, verified deployments, and how much of their autonomy is independently verified. See the table above for the full head-to-head; each figure is sourced.
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