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Evan Tao
CEO, Chestnut Robotics
Company

Based in
Santa Clara, CA
Stage
Seed
Type
Founder
Evan Tao is co-founder and CEO of Chestnut Robotics, a Santa Clara startup building the Aero Hand, a tendon-driven five-fingered robotic hand for dexterous manipulation in factories. Before founding the company, originally launched as TetherIA in 2025, he led development of Tesla's second-generation dexterous hand for the Optimus program. Chestnut Robotics pairs the Aero Hand with a data-collection exoskeleton and an open-source software stack aimed at making reliable robotic manipulation affordable for labs, startups, and manufacturers.
Company

Chestnut Robotics
Chestnut Robotics builds a tendon-driven, data-collection-enabled robotic hand aimed at bringing reliable dexterous manipulation to factory automation.
Founded
2025
Raised
$2M+
Stage
Seed
HQ
Santa Clara, CA
Investors
MPC
Matrix Partners China
MP
Miracle Plus
PV
Ponderosa Ventures
TbS
Thrive by SVG Ventures
Investor data via Harmonic
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23:22:49:22
[ section ]
become a sponsor
All rights reserved
DIRTY JOBS SUMMIT 2026
[ DIRTY JOBS Starts in: ]
23:22:49:22
[ section ]
become a sponsor
All rights reserved
DIRTY JOBS SUMMIT 2026