On May 9, 2020, TRISTONES AI ROBOTICS LABS LLC received its Certificate of Existence from the Oregon Secretary of State — marking the official birth of one of the Pacific Northwest's most ambitious AI robotics ventures.
Founded by Lei Wu, TRISTONES was established with a singular mission: to build AI-powered service robots that don't just follow commands, but genuinely understand, anticipate, and care for the people they serve. At a time when most robotics companies were focused on industrial automation, TRISTONES deliberately chose a different path — focusing on human-facing service robots for home care, hospitality, and healthcare.
Why Oregon?
The choice of Oregon was deliberate. The Pacific Northwest has long been home to a thriving culture of technological innovation, academic excellence, and quality of life research — values that align closely with TRISTONES's mission. Oregon's growing tech ecosystem, proximity to West Coast university talent, and supportive startup environment made it the ideal launchpad for a company building robots that interact with people in deeply personal environments.
"We didn't want to build in a vacuum," said Founder Lei Wu. "Oregon gives us the space to think carefully about what robots should do for people — not just what they technically can do."
From Idea to LLC
The concept for TRISTONES was in development for nearly two years before incorporation. The founding team spent this period studying gaps in existing home-care technology, conducting ethnographic research with elderly users and their families, and sketching out the technical architecture that would eventually become the company's AI Brain OS — a proprietary stack combining large language model reasoning with real-time physical actuation.
The formal incorporation in May 2020 — coinciding with the early months of the global pandemic — gave the team new urgency. The pandemic had made starkly visible the vulnerabilities of elderly individuals living alone or in under-staffed care facilities. The need for intelligent, reliable in-home robotic assistance had never been clearer.
The Road Ahead
From day one, TRISTONES committed to a long-term R&D posture rather than a rush to market. The company's early roadmap called for at least two to three years of fundamental research before any commercial product would ship — a bet on depth over speed that has since paid off in the form of a robust patent portfolio and a product line that stands up to rigorous technical scrutiny.
Today, TRISTONES operates five commercial product lines, holds multiple granted patents, and has been recognized by IEEE, CES, and VENTURE50. But on May 9, 2020, it was simply a small team with a big idea and a Certificate of Existence from the State of Oregon.