Sunday
The helpful robotics company
While most technology demands your attention, we’re building the opposite, technology that gives you back time. We believe every day should feel like Sunday, filled with connection, creativity, and the moments that make us human.
Industry-leading research
Development
Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi’s research created the foundation the entire robotics ecosystem now builds upon. ALOHA, Diffusion Policy, the UMI gripper—their breakthroughs showed how robots could finally learn from humans efficiently.
At Sunday, we’re taking these innovations from the lab to life. By collecting data from hundreds of real people in real homes, we are building robots that don’t just work in controlled environments—they work in yours.
Led by young mavericks
Team
Tony Zhao
CEO, Co-Founder
Tony earned his B.S. in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2021, and dropped out of his Stanford CS PhD in 2024. He was advised by renowned researchers Sergey Levine and Chelsea Finn, and his research on robotic fine manipulation tasks led to the widely recognized ALOHA project, which helped establish a new paradigm for imitation learning in robotics.
Tony’s decision to leave academia was driven by the conviction that robotics research had matured enough to be translated into real-world impact. Before founding Sunday, he worked at Google DeepMind, Tesla Autopilot, and Google X Intrinsic.
Today, he leads a team of 30+ engineers, designers, and researchers in Silicon Valley, united by the mission of giving people their time back for the things that matter most. He credits the team’s breakthroughs to one core value: persistence.
Cheng Chi
CTO, Co-Founder
Cheng earned his B.S. in CS from the University of Michigan and PhD in CS from Columbia University, advised by Shuran Song.
A leading robotics researcher, he invented Diffusion Policy, a seminal work that has garnered over 2,000 citations in just two years and has been widely adopted across industry and academia. His research has earned two Best Paper Awards and two Best Systems Paper Finalist honors at top conferences including RSS and ICRA.
At Sunday, Cheng leads the technical vision and has architected a next-generation robotics stack—from data collection infrastructure through machine learning pipelines to robot software—building the core systems that drive the company's robotics platform.
Cheng has a mind that cannot rest; if you don’t find him in the lab, he’s busy fixing a vintage polaroid camera or DIYing Invisalign and sparkling water at home.
Team
What we care about
Company values
Solutions over methods
Stay low ego, and don't worry about being right in principle, or staying within your job description. Find the thing that works.
Kindness
If we are not able to be kind to each other, we cannot expect our product to bring people joy.
We are each other's customers
We share a vision. We exist to help each other get unblocked, move faster, and make better-informed decisions.
Hard things are hard
If it were easy, everyone would do it. Persistence through hard times will define our success.
Shape the future of helpful robotics
Join the team
Careers