Company
Chestnut Robotics
Chestnut Robotics (formerly TetherIA) builds tendon-driven dexterous robot hands designed for real-world factory deployment.
- Founded
- 2025
- HQ
- Santa Clara, CA
- Status
- Private
Models
1
Overview
Chestnut Robotics (formerly TetherIA) builds tendon-driven dexterous robot hands designed for real-world factory deployment. The company's flagship Aero Hand is an 18-DOF production-grade hand with sub-millimeter precision, 0.1 N tactile sensitivity, and 20 kg payload, engineered for 3M+ duty cycles. Chestnut also develops the Aero UMI data-collection exoskeleton and GAIN3D geometry-aware inpainting engine to generate zero-embodiment-gap training data for robotic foundation models. Founded in 2025 in Santa Clara, CA by ex-Tesla Optimus and Waymo engineers.
Verified record
- Verified deployments
- None on file
- Active incidents
- None on file
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Key facts
CEO
Evan Tao (Co-founder and CEO)
CTO
Joe (Xu) Dong (Co-founder and CTO)
Founded
2025
HQ
Santa Clara, CA
Former name
TetherIA
Funding
Angel round (Oct 2025), led by Matrix Partners China
Financial stage
Early-stage (pre-Series A)
Team background
Ex-Tesla Optimus, Waymo, XPeng, Apple, ASML, Zoox
Data & sources
Press releases
1
Web sources
4
5 sources backing this record.View all →
Models (1)
View all models →Relationships
Current leadership (2)
- Joe (Xu) Dong Co-founder & CTOreported, not verified
- Evan Tao Co-founder and CEOreported, not verified
Founders (2)
- Joe (Xu) Dongcofounder
- Evan Taono longer at company
Safety record
No incidents on record for Chestnut Robotics.
Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.
Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →
Recent coverage
Chestnut Robotics in third-party press
A 400g Tendon-Driven Robot Hand — Inside Chestnut Robotics (The Humanoid Hub tour)
Innovator Coffee EP-36: Beyond the Model — The Real Challenge of Robotics (interview with Joe Dong)
Robotics companies like MagicLab turn to synthetic data in the embodied intelligence race
Funding rounds (1)
- Angel2025-10-22
Investors: Matrix Partners China (lead)
Sources (5)
- Chestnut Robotics: We build the data-driven dexterous hand · https://chestnut.bot/
- https://chestnut.bot/master-plan.html
- Chestnut Robotics: LinkedIn · https://www.linkedin.com/company/chestnutbot
- https://x.com/ChestnutRobotic
- Robotics companies like MagicLab turn to synthetic data in the embodied intelligence race · https://kr-asia.com/robotics-companies-like-magiclab-turn-to-synthetic-data-in-the-embodied-intelligence-race
Common questions
- What is Chestnut Robotics?
- Chestnut Robotics (formerly TetherIA) builds tendon-driven dexterous robot hands designed for real-world factory deployment. The company's flagship Aero Hand is an 18-DOF production-grade hand with sub-millimeter precision, 0.1 N tactile sensitivity, and 20 kg payload, engineered for 3M+ duty cycles. Chestnut also develops the Aero UMI data-collection exoskeleton and GAIN3D geometry-aware inpainting engine to generate zero-embodiment-gap training data for robotic foundation models. Founded in 2025 in Santa Clara, CA by ex-Tesla Optimus and Waymo engineers.
- What does Chestnut Robotics make?
- Chestnut Robotics has 1 robot model on the DEPLOY registry: Aero Hand (Chestnut Robotics builds physical robots).
- Is Chestnut Robotics publicly traded?
- No. Chestnut Robotics is privately held and not publicly traded, per the DEPLOY registry.
- Where is Chestnut Robotics headquartered?
- Chestnut Robotics is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA.
- Where does Chestnut Robotics operate robots?
- Chestnut Robotics is a robot manufacturer and does not directly operate deployments on the DEPLOY registry. Its products are deployed by customer operators; see the company page for the verified deployment record.
- Is Chestnut Robotics a top robotics company?
- On DEPLOY's intelligence score, which blends verified deployments, funding, hiring, media, safety, and IP signals, Chestnut Robotics ranks in roughly the top 100% of companies tracked by the registry.
- Is Chestnut Robotics safe?
- Chestnut Robotics has no incidents on record in the DEPLOY registry. This does not constitute a safety guarantee; it reflects the incidents DEPLOY has tracked and verified to date.
Methodology: Verified · 5 sources (1 primary) · last reviewed 2026-07-13
Verification posture
Verified
High confidence
Review state
Stable
Last reviewed 2026-07-13
Sources by quality tier
- 4
- unclassified
- Unclassified source
- 1
- primary-company-ir
- Company IR disclosure
The framework is documented at /methodology. Corrections at /corrections. Reviewer: DEPLOY editorial team.
Methodology surface for Chestnut Robotics.In the press
Recent coverage mentioning Chestnut Robotics from third-party publications. Automatically surfaced; not part of the verified registry record.
A 400g Tendon-Driven Robot Hand — Inside Chestnut Robotics (The Humanoid Hub tour)
The Humanoid Hub tours Chestnut Robotics in Shanghai and interviews co-founder and CTO Joe Dong about their tendon-driven dexterous hand approach.
Innovator Coffee EP-36: Beyond the Model — The Real Challenge of Robotics (interview with Joe Dong)
Podcast interview with Chestnut Robotics co-founder and CTO Joe Dong on dexterous manipulation, robotics data bottlenecks, and the path from AI engineer to startup founder.
Robotics companies like MagicLab turn to synthetic data in the embodied intelligence race
KrASIA coverage of the embodied intelligence summit where Chestnut Robotics founder Evan Tao presented the company hybrid tendon-driven dexterous hand architecture.
Open-Source Dexterous Manipulation with MANUS Gloves — Aero Hand Open
MANUS Meta use case featuring Chestnut Robotics Aero Hand Open, a lightweight open-source robotic hand with 16 joints and 7 motors, demonstrated in bimanual teleoperation tasks.
Machine-readable surfaces
- Markdown mirror: /companies/chestnut-robotics.md
- RSS feed: /companies/chestnut-robotics/feed.xml
- JSON-LD: embedded in this page’s head
- REST API: /v1/companies/b3270e9b-f5f6-4446-849e-c7e8af00edf6
- Revision history: /companies/chestnut-robotics/history
- Data documentation: /data
- Query this programmatically: Deploy MCP
Video
We toured Chestnut Robotics in Shanghai and sat down with co-founder & CTO Joe Dong. The Santa Clara, CA based startup has built a tendon-driven hand with all
DEPLOY Intelligence Score
0.0/ 100
6-month trend
Analysis
Limited public visibility and press coverage relative to peers.
Dimension breakdown
DEPLOY Intelligence scores are computed from verified registry data: confirmed deployments, disclosed funding rounds, regulatory filings, active job listings, video viewership, and press coverage. Confidence ratings reflect data availability. Scores update nightly.
DEPLOY Indices — verified vs claimed
Last computed: Jul 13, 2026
Intelligence layerChestnut Robotics on the deployment map
Where Chestnut Robotics's robots are verified operating. Explore the deployment map by place and type.