Pronto founder's Provision Labs buys Basilisk to add touch data to its robot-training bet
What's the deal? ProvisionDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the physical AI venture founded by Pronto's Anjali Sardana, has acquired Mumbai-based hardware startup Basilisk IndustriesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → for an undisclosed price. Sardana announced the deal in a LinkedIn post, adding Basilisk's perception and hardware talent to her data-collection company.
What's the endgame? Provision collects the real-world data that physical AI systems need for training — the visual and touch signals that a robot needs to, say, fold laundry. Basilisk, founded in 2023, had already built a 3D hand-tracking model, redesigned Provision's perception hardware, and assembled an early version of a lightweight tactile glove that captures touch, which cameras cannot.
Who's coming in? Basilisk founder Shourya Watwani will lead Provision's hardware work and its in-house post-processing models, with his team joining alongside him. Provision is also hiring across San Francisco, Toronto, and Bengaluru for roles in computer vision, perception, tactile data, and hardware.
Why now? The acquisition lands amid a surge in physical-AI investment, with robotics startups raising $9.9 billion globally in Q3 2026, more than double a year earlier. Owning the hardware lets Provision decide what gets captured and how, rather than relying on third-party devices.
What could go wrong? Provision's launch followed a row over a Pronto pilot in which service professionals wore cameras while cleaning and folding laundry inside customers' homes, raising questions about privacy and consent. Pronto said customers had to opt in, that the pilot covered less than 0.01% of users, and that it complied with India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act. A glove that records touch is another way of capturing data about people at work, so the same questions will apply.
The signal: Robots need large volumes of real-world, multimodal interaction data, not text scraped from the web — and Provision is building hardware to capture it. But the company is newly launched, with no established customer traction, so this is an early capability-building move, not proof of a scaled business.
Read more: maliktimes.in
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
