Toyota Research Institute

Toyota Research Institute, usually called TRI, is the Japanese carmaker's research lab for artificial intelligence and robotics. Its headquarters sits on El Camino Real in Los Altos, a short drive south of Palo Alto and Stanford. TRI is not a startup. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation. Still, it is one of the larger AI research groups on the Peninsula. Its work ranges from self-driving cars to household robots to battery materials.

This profile draws on TRI's website, its news releases and a summary of its history on Wikipedia. Research claims are TRI's own and are attributed that way.

What TRI does

TRI says its mission is to enable "strategic technological surprise" for Toyota. In plain terms, it looks for ideas that could change the company's business over the long run, rather than building next year's car. Its website lists five research areas.

• Automated driving advanced development. Self-driving and driver assistance technology.
• Human interactive driving. How drivers and automated systems share control, including work at high speed.
• Robotics. Robots that learn tasks from human demonstrations, including household jobs.
• Energy and materials. Using AI to speed up the discovery of new materials, including for batteries.
• Human-centered AI. How people use AI and how technology can change behavior, such as how drivers charge plug-in vehicles.

TRI publishes much of its research in academic venues and lists its papers on its site. It also runs Toyota Ventures, founded in July 2017, which invests in early-stage startups in AI, autonomy, robotics, energy and related fields.

Founding and leadership

Toyota established TRI in 2016 with a planned investment of $1 billion over five years, focused on AI and robotics. Dr. Gill Pratt, a roboticist who had been a program manager at DARPA, the Pentagon's research agency, became chief executive when operations began. TRI's leadership page still lists him in that role in 2026.

The institute chose its two main sites to sit near leading universities. TRI describes its Los Altos office as being "in the center of the global tech industry," which helps it run a collaborative program with Stanford University. Its Cambridge, Massachusetts office has a robotics lab near MIT. TRI also had an office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which Wikipedia lists as a former location.

Other leaders listed on TRI's site in 2026 include Max Bajracharya, senior vice president for robotics; Dr. Ryan Eustice, senior vice president for automated driving advanced development; Dr. Brian Storey, vice president for energy and materials; Dr. Avinash Balachandran, vice president for human interactive driving; and Dr. Charlene Wu, vice president for human-centered AI.

In 2018 Toyota set up a related unit in Tokyo, TRI Advanced Development, with the suppliers Denso and Aisin. That unit later became Woven Planet Holdings in January 2021, now Woven by Toyota. TRI in Los Altos remains a separate organization.

Robots that learn by example

TRI's robotics group has drawn wide attention for what it calls large behavior models. The idea is similar to a large language model, except the system learns physical skills. Researchers show a robot how to do tasks. The model then learns to generalize across many of them.

In 2025 TRI and Boston Dynamics announced work applying large behavior models to Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid robot. TRI's site points to a September 2025 WIRED story on that work, quoting Russ Tedrake, TRI's senior vice president for large behavior models. In April 2026 TRI highlighted coverage arguing that humanoid robots had reached a turning point as their software caught up with their hardware. Those are TRI's own framings of its progress.

Materials research and university grants

TRI funds a large share of outside research. Two recent programs show how.

1. Synthesis Advanced Research Challenge. Announced in April 2024, this multiyear challenge funded four academic proposals on turning AI-predicted materials into real recipes for making them. On October 27, 2026, TRI said a project by Dr. Daniel Schwalbe-Koda of UCLA would advance to experimental testing with $1.4 million over two years. TRI tied the work to amorphous materials used in future electric vehicle batteries.
2. University Research Program 3.0. Announced on May 18, 2026, this five-year phase supports 69 research projects at 31 universities, with 88 TRI researchers and 104 faculty members. TRI said it was the largest group since the program began, with 11 new institutions. It named MIT, Stanford and the University of Michigan as long-standing foundational partners.

Each university project is co-led by a faculty researcher and a TRI co-investigator. The program also includes 10 projects for young faculty.

Driving research

TRI's driving work covers both automation and assistance. Its human interactive driving group studies how a car can help a driver at the limits of control, such as in a skid. TRI and Stanford mechanical engineers have presented joint research on automated drifting with modified Toyota GR Supra cars, a way to study control at the edge of traction. TRI's human-centered AI group, meanwhile, published research in September 2025 on why many plug-in hybrid owners rarely plug in. It also looked at how behavioral science might change that habit.

TRI at a glance

One thing to keep straight: TRI is often confused with the Toyota Research Institute of North America, an older Toyota research group founded in 2008. The two are different organizations. When news stories mention Toyota AI research in Los Altos, they mean TRI.

Ties to Stanford and the Peninsula

TRI sits in a corridor of corporate research labs that runs from Menlo Park to Sunnyvale. SRI International in Menlo Park, the former Xerox PARC on Coyote Hill Road and Ford Greenfield Labs in Palo Alto are all nearby. Our guide to research labs near Palo Alto maps many of them.

The Stanford link is explicit in TRI's own description of its Los Altos site. Stanford's AI and robotics work goes back to the 1960s. Its 2005 self-driving car win helped launch the industry TRI now works in. Our page on Stanford and the history of AI covers that history. Researchers who want to hear TRI scientists speak should watch the calendars in our Stanford public lectures guide.

Los Altos itself is a small city with a walkable downtown. Our Los Altos guide covers the town. Downtown Los Altos is a few minutes from El Camino Real.

Visiting and practical notes

Frequently asked questions