Greg Toroosian

Machine Minds

About the show

Machine Minds - the minds behind the machines! This is the show where we dive deep into the intricate worlds of robotics, AI, and Hard Tech. In each episode, we bring you intimate conversations with the founders, investors, and trailblazers who are at the heart of these tech revolutions. We dig into their journeys, the challenges they've overcome, and the breakthroughs that are shaping our future. Join us as we explore how these machine minds are transforming the way we live, work, and understand our world.

Newest episodes

Betting on the Physical World with Seth Winterroth

Nov 11, 2026 51 min

Robotics has never had more capital, talent, technology, or customer interest behind it. But for all the excitement around physical AI, Seth Winterroth believes the industry is entering a much harder phase: proving that the robots can actually work in the real world. Seth Winterroth, Partner at Eclipse, returns to Machine Minds to unpack the shift from robotics hype to commercial execution. After more than a decade investing in the physical economy, Seth has lived through both the coldest periods of robotics investment and the current surge of capital flooding into the category. His message to founders is simple: the technology is ready, the market is ready, and now companies have to ship. Greg and Seth explore why impressive demos and model breakthroughs are only the beginning, what separates teams that survive the difficult transition into production, and why the next generation of robotics winners will be defined by reliability, customer value, disciplined capital allocation, and strong unit economics. Highlights: Why Seth believes robotics is still only in the early innings, despite the enormous growth in capital, talent, technology, policy support, and commercial interest around physical-world industries.How robotics went from an overlooked corner of venture investing to one of the most competitive and highly funded technology categories.The downside of a frothy market, including overcapitalization, lack of focus, inflated valuations, and companies that may ultimately have very little to show for the money they raised.Why founders need to shift their focus from compelling narratives and flashy demonstrations toward production systems that are reliable, safe, scalable, and economically valuable to customers.Seth's challenge to the industry: "Where are all the robots?" and why companies that fail to get real systems into the world may not survive the next phase of the market.Why deep tech investing requires evaluating qualitative signals long before revenue appea...

Who Gets to Say AGI Is Here? with Andrew Kemendo

Nov 4, 2026 1 hr 1 min

Artificial general intelligence is moving from a research ambition to a mainstream claim. But when industry leaders say AGI has arrived, what exactly are they measuring? Andrew Kemendo, Executive Director of the AGI Society, joins Greg to explore how we should evaluate increasingly bold claims about artificial intelligence, why benchmarks alone may not capture general intelligence, and what it would actually take for an intelligent system to operate meaningfully in the physical and social world. Andrew brings an unusually broad perspective shaped by gaming, military intelligence, software development, reinforcement learning, robotics, and decades of interest in human-level machines. His career has taken him from the Air Force Academy and intelligence work in Iraq to helping modernize software delivery inside the military, contributing to early ethical AI standards, building AI products, and now helping lead an organization that has spent nearly two decades bringing together researchers working on AGI. The conversation examines the difference between believing a technological claim and scientifically demonstrating it. Andrew explains how the AGI Society evaluates public claims by looking at what was actually tested, what evidence is missing, and whether existing benchmarks capture enough of the physical, contextual, and social capabilities we associate with intelligence. Greg and Andrew also dig into embodiment, the limits of foundation models, why human intelligence cannot be reduced to a single neural system, and Andrew’s proposed upgrade to the Wozniak Coffee Test: putting a robot into an unfamiliar and socially complicated environment where making coffee requires understanding people, incentives, context, and consequences. Highlights: Andrew’s unconventional path from teenage game development and Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines to military intelligence, AI, robotics, and the AGI Society.How intelligence work trained him to separate narrative from rea...

Every Robot Needs to Know Where It Is with Aaron Nathan

Oct 28, 2026 56 min

As robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, and machines move deeper into the physical world, knowing exactly where they are becomes foundational. Point One Navigation is building the precision location infrastructure designed to make that possible at massive scale. Aaron Nathan, CEO and founder of Point One Navigation, joins Greg to unpack why traditional GPS is not precise enough for many autonomous systems, how his team can take positioning accuracy from roughly five meters down to just a few centimeters, and why location will become a critical layer of infrastructure for the physical AI economy. Aaron’s path into autonomy started long before self-driving cars became mainstream. As a student at Cornell, he helped build the university’s DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle during an era when autonomous vehicles required racks of computers, foundational software had to be written from scratch, and the supporting robotics ecosystem barely existed. That experience taught him an enduring lesson: no matter how sophisticated perception or control becomes, a machine that does not reliably know where it is cannot operate safely. That insight eventually led to Point One Navigation, where Aaron and his team are building the location layer for everything from autonomous lawnmowers and agricultural equipment to drones, vehicles, and large robotic fleets. Greg and Aaron explore: Aaron’s early robotics journey, from soccer-playing robots at Cornell to helping build an autonomous vehicle for the DARPA Grand ChallengeWhy the hardest problems in robotics often live at the intersection of software and hardware, rather than inside either discipline aloneHow lessons from Coherent Navigation, cybersecurity, privacy, and large-scale software platforms shaped the architecture and philosophy behind Point OneWhy Aaron chose to build foundational infrastructure for autonomy instead of creating another autonomous vehicle companyHow Point One makes GPS roughly 100 times more accurate, taking positionin...

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All episodes

Betting on the Physical World with Seth Winterroth

Nov 11, 2026 51 min

Who Gets to Say AGI Is Here? with Andrew Kemendo

Nov 4, 2026 1 hr 1 min

Every Robot Needs to Know Where It Is with Aaron Nathan

Oct 28, 2026 56 min

Digitizing the Shelf: Simbe's Store Intelligence with Caitlin Allen

Oct 21, 2026 49 min

Retailers know what enters their stores and what leaves them, but what happens in between has traditionally been a major data blind spot. Caitlin Allen, SVP of Marketing at Simbe Robotics, joins Greg to explore how robots, computer vision, and shelf intelligence are helping retailers finally understand what is happening inside the aisle and turn that visibility into measurable business outcomes. Caitlin has spent two decades building markets around disruptive technologies, from medical technology and enterprise software to roles at Andreessen Horowitz, Lyft, and now robotics. Across those experiences, one lesson has remained consistent: great technology is not enough. Creating a new category means helping customers understand why they need to change, giving them confidence to act, and building the organizational support required to make that change stick. At Simbe, that means looking beyond Tally as simply an inventory robot. The company’s platform uses robotics and other sensing technologies to detect what is happening on the shelf, determine what needs attention, direct teams toward action, and confirm that the problem has been resolved. The result is a continuously improving source of shelf data that can support everything from pricing and replenishment to ecommerce fulfillment, demand forecasting, and the broader move toward self-optimizing stores. In this conversation, Greg and Caitlin explore: Caitlin’s unconventional path from medical technology and entrepreneurship to Andreessen Horowitz, Lyft, and eventually retail roboticsWhy category creation starts with showing buyers the cost of standing still before asking them to embrace something newThe balance between FOMO, the fear of missing out, and the fear of messing up when introducing disruptive technologyWhy the retail shelf remains one of the industry’s biggest data blind spots, and how digitizing it can unlock value across the entire retail ecosystemHow Tally uses autonomous shelf scanning to identify misp...

One Platform for Humans, Robots, and AVs with Johan Land

Oct 14, 2026 49 min

The next frontier of AI will not be confined to screens. It will live in trucks, warehouses, construction sites, factories, roads, and the countless physical operations that keep the world moving. Johan Land, Chief Product Officer at Samsara, joins Greg to explore what happens when AI meets the messy reality of the physical world. Drawing on a career spanning Google, YouTube, Waymo, TomTom, Kobalt Music, and now Samsara, Johan shares why learning has been the thread connecting every stage of his journey, and why staying relevant in the current AI era requires continuously testing the limits of what new models can actually do. At Samsara, that challenge means connecting cameras, sensors, vehicles, machines, and workers, turning enormous amounts of real-world data into insights, then using AI agents to act on those insights. Johan explains why the final step, autonomous action, is also the hardest, especially when AI systems are making judgment calls involving driver safety, industrial operations, and potentially life-or-death situations. In this conversation, Greg and Johan explore: Why Johan believes most people underestimate how capable AI models already are, and why even a few months can leave your understanding out of dateHow constant experimentation and building custom model harnesses help him understand where the frontier of AI actually isThe lessons Johan took from helping transform Waymo from a research project into an operating service, particularly why the long tail of edge cases determines whether AI works in the real worldWhy physical AI starts with data, and how Samsara uses cameras, sensors, machines, vehicles, and human inputs to build a real-time picture of physical operationsHow Samsara layers analytics and AI agents on top of that data to identify problems, guide decisions, and increasingly take action on behalf of operatorsWhy autonomous agents are harder than analytics, especially when AI must make judgment calls around safety, escalation, complia...

Selling Airspace Awareness Before the Market Knows It Needs It with Melissa Swisher

Oct 7, 2026 52 min

Having the best technology does not guarantee you win. Customers do not buy engineering. They buy outcomes. Melissa Swisher, Chief Revenue Officer at SkySafe, joins Greg to explore what it takes to turn sophisticated technology into a repeatable business, and why that challenge is becoming increasingly important as drones become a routine part of the world around us. Melissa brings decades of experience building and scaling go-to-market organizations across enterprise software, healthcare technology, AI, and now airspace intelligence. Her career has included high-growth companies, IPOs, founding and successfully exiting Socrates AI, and learning firsthand how culture, focus, and customer understanding can determine whether a technically impressive company actually succeeds. At SkySafe, Melissa has helped move the business from experimentation toward a focused, scalable go-to-market model. Since joining, the company has quadrupled revenue and grown from a handful of customers to roughly 50 by narrowing its focus, creating clearer buying motions, and building around federal, public safety, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure customers. The conversation also explores the rapidly changing world above us. As drones become cheaper, more capable, and more common, organizations increasingly need visibility beyond the traditional fence line. SkySafe is building an intelligence network designed not simply to detect a drone, but to understand where it came from, whether it has appeared before, how it behaves, and what patterns emerge across locations over time. Greg and Melissa get into: Why having the best technology is not enough to win, and why customers ultimately buy outcomes rather than engineeringMelissa’s journey from enterprise sales and leadership to founding Socrates AI and eventually joining SkySafeHow mentors shaped her career and why she now pushes people into bigger opportunities before they necessarily feel readyWhat dramatically different company cult...

The Lawyer Who Writes Robotics' Rulebook with Michael Bearman

Sep 30, 2026 43 min

There’s a huge difference between making a robot work in a lab and making it reliable enough to survive the chaos of a real warehouse. For Michael Bearman, Chief Legal and Safety Officer at Vecna Robotics, closing that gap has been a 23-year journey spanning legal, operations, customer deployments, fundraising, safety, and industry standards. Michael joins Greg to share how he went from outside counsel to becoming one of Vecna’s longest-serving leaders, taking on everything from contracts and customer implementations to financial modeling and even an all-night soldering session before a robot demonstration at Congress. That willingness to jump into unfamiliar problems gave him a front-row seat as Vecna evolved from experimental robotics projects into industrial automation deployed across warehouses and manufacturing facilities. They explore why impressive robotics demos are very different from commercially viable products, how an early rescue robot helped Vecna learn that lesson firsthand, and why a major FedEx deployment pushed the company toward industrial mobile robots. Michael also breaks down Vecna’s approach to automated forklifts, tuggers, and CaseFlow, including how one customer doubled throughput with half the staff by rethinking the traditional case-picking workflow. In this conversation, Greg and Michael explore: Michael’s unconventional journey from outside legal counsel to Chief Legal and Safety Officer, and the many operational, financial, customer, and leadership roles he took on along the wayWhy there is such a large gap between a successful robotics demonstration and a system that customers can rely on in real-world industrial environmentsHow Vecna’s early Bear rescue robot helped build the technology, team, and relationships that eventually supported its pivot into industrial roboticsThe FedEx deployment that put more robots into a single site than Vecna’s entire existing fleet and helped reshape the company’s directionHow automated tuggers, forkli...

The Visual Cortex of Physical AI with Chris Matthieu

Sep 23, 2026 48 min

What happens when AI agents stop living entirely on screens and start controlling cameras, wheels, motors, and eventually full robotic bodies? Chris Matthieu, VP of Developer Ecosystem at RealSense, joins Greg to explore the rapidly converging worlds of AI agents, computer vision, robotics, and physical intelligence. A lifelong hacker who started programming on a Commodore VIC-20 as a kid, Chris has spent more than four decades building technology, including five startup exits, before joining Intel as an entrepreneur in residence and eventually helping grow the RealSense developer ecosystem. Chris shares how his fascination with connected machines evolved from IoT platforms and decentralized computing into his latest project, AgenticROS, an experimental system that gives AI agents direct access to ROS and allows them to perceive and control physical robots. His robot Bob can already use camera data to identify where Chris is, calculate his position, control its wheels, and follow him through a room without Chris explicitly programming every behavior. Greg and Chris also dig into RealSense’s evolution from an Intel incubator project into an independent company, why depth perception is becoming foundational infrastructure for physical AI, and how open source software, cheaper hardware, and AI coding tools are dramatically lowering the barrier to building real robotic systems. Highlights: Chris’s journey from hacking on Commodore computers as a child to building and exiting five technology startups before moving into Intel and RealSense. - Why builders who avoid ROS can end up recreating infrastructure that already exists, and why the broader ROS ecosystem can dramatically accelerate robotics development.How AgenticROS connects tools such as Claude, Codex, Gemini, and other AI agents directly to ROS, giving them access to cameras, perception data, and robot controls.Why Chris believes increasingly capable AI models may eventually control robotic bodies without develope...

The Factory Is the Innovation with Eric Hostetler

Sep 16, 2026 51 min

What if the biggest bottleneck in defense technology is not designing better systems, but actually figuring out how to manufacture them at the speed, cost, quality, and scale modern warfare demands? Eric Hostetler, CEO and co-founder of Volund Manufacturing, joins Greg to unpack why America’s defense industrial base needs more than individual manufacturing breakthroughs. Drawing on a career that spans Vans, Oakley, Fox Racing, Apple, Anduril, and high-end defense manufacturing, Eric brings a consumer goods mindset to one of the country’s most urgent industrial challenges: producing reliable defense hardware at scale. At Volund, that philosophy is being applied to air-breathing propulsion systems for low-cost, attritable drones and other unmanned systems. Rather than treating the engine as the only innovation, Eric and his team are building a vertically integrated factory where manufacturing, quality control, software, automation, and production planning are designed as one system from the beginning. In this conversation, Greg and Eric explore: Eric’s unconventional path from BMX bikes and learning to weld to nearly 100 trips to China while building consumer products for companies including Vans, Oakley, Fox Racing, and AppleHow working on rifles for U.S. special operations helped push Eric from consumer products into defense, eventually leading him to join Anduril as one of its earliest employeesWhy consumer goods taught him that cost, quality, production volume, and speed cannot be treated as problems to solve after a product has already been designedThe problem with designing defense hardware for the demo first and planning to “optimize for manufacturing” laterWhy Eric believes manufacturers need to optimize the whole cost and complexity equation instead of focusing too heavily on individual technologies like AI, robotics, or automationHow Volund is building vertically integrated propulsion manufacturing for low-cost, medium-to-long-range unmanned systemsWhy the f...

The Temp Agency for Robots with Matt Bush

Sep 9, 2026 54 min

For decades, manufacturers have struggled with the same fundamental problem: there simply are not enough people to fill the jobs that need to be done. Matt Bush believes solving that problem requires changing the way manufacturers think about robotics entirely. Matt joins Greg to share how nearly two decades running manufacturing plants shaped his approach to automation, from deploying some of the earliest collaborative robots on production lines to building robotic systems designed to feel less like engineering projects and more like everyday tools. His goal is simple: make automation easy enough that the people already working on the shop floor can deploy and use it themselves. That philosophy led to Beacon, a unified software platform that gives manufacturers the same interface across robotic welding, plasma cutting, painting, and other applications, regardless of the underlying robot hardware. By combining standardized systems, cloud connectivity, fleet-wide software updates, and highly responsive support, Matt and his team are working to remove the friction that has historically kept robotics out of smaller and more flexible manufacturing environments. Greg and Matt explore: How nearly two decades running manufacturing plants taught Matt the importance of producing closer to the point of consumption, and why global supply chain fragility has reinforced that lessonThe story of "Waldo," an early collaborative robot that moved between jobs throughout a Tennessee factory and showed employees how flexible automation could becomeWhy employee attitudes toward robots changed once workers realized automation was taking over repetitive, uncomfortable, and undesirable tasks rather than eliminating their jobsHow labor shortages pushed Matt toward robotics as a service, including no upfront capital, limited commitment, and a model designed to reduce the financial and operational risk of adopting automationWhy decades of efforts to solve manufacturing labor shortages through...

Why Your Sales Pipeline Deserves the Same Rigor as Your Factory Floor with Ed Marsh

Sep 2, 2026 52 min

Industrial companies apply extraordinary rigor to manufacturing, quality, and operations, yet their approach to revenue growth is often far less disciplined. Founder and principal Ed Marsh joins Greg to explore what changes when manufacturers start treating marketing and sales like an integrated system that can be measured, optimized, and continuously improved. Ed brings decades of experience across engineering, the Army, industrial sales and marketing, international business, capital equipment, and consulting. Today, through Ed Marsh Consulting, he works primarily with middle-market industrial companies and private equity-backed manufacturers on organic revenue growth, spanning strategy, marketing, sales, technology, talent, and executive leadership. A central idea behind Ed’s work is Overall Revenue Effectiveness, a framework inspired by Overall Equipment Effectiveness in manufacturing. Instead of accepting leakage throughout the customer journey as inevitable, Ed argues that companies should examine every stage of the revenue engine, from understanding the buyer and generating demand to qualifying opportunities, coaching salespeople, and closing business. In this conversation, Greg and Ed explore: Why industrial buyers care far more about operational outcomes than product features, and why sellers need to understand how a solution affects KPIs, staffing, downtime, shipments, capacity, and the buyer’s day-to-day realityWhy identifying customer pain is only the beginning of a sales conversation, and why the real focus should be the business outcome a customer is trying to achieveHow Ed developed the Overall Revenue Effectiveness framework by treating organic revenue growth as an integrated system similar to a manufacturing operationWhy small inefficiencies across marketing and sales compound into extremely low overall revenue effectiveness, even when individual parts of the system appear to be performing reasonably wellWhy manufacturers would never tolerate the lev...

The Future of Software-Defined Automation with Etienne Lacroix

Aug 26, 2026 54 min

Factory automation has traditionally been expensive, fragmented, and heavily dependent on specialized system integrators. Vention is challenging that model by turning automation into something closer to a software platform, where manufacturers can design, simulate, program, order, deploy, and operate industrial equipment within a connected digital ecosystem. Etienne Lacroix, founder and CEO of Vention, joins Greg to share how his early experience as a teenage system integrator exposed him to the inefficiencies of traditional automation and ultimately inspired a different approach. From modular hardware and browser-based 3D design to software-defined controls and physical AI, Etienne has spent the last decade building a platform designed to dramatically reduce the time, cost, and engineering complexity required to automate a factory. In this conversation, Greg and Etienne explore: How Etienne went from designing machines and selling automation cells at 19 to identifying the fundamental problems behind traditional system integrationWhy approximately 40% of traditional automation costs can come from engineering and integration, and how a platform-based approach can dramatically reduce that burdenThe technological breakthrough that made Vention possible: bringing engineering-grade 3D design into the web browser and connecting design directly with purchasing and deploymentEtienne’s simple mental model for Vention: combining 3D design software, industrial Lego, and Amazon Prime into one automation ecosystemHow Vention connects machine specification, 3D design, programming, simulation, ordering, deployment, monitoring, and support within a single digital workflowWhy reducing integration complexity can make automation accessible to mid-market manufacturers that historically could not justify the economicsHow Vention customers are achieving automation payback periods averaging around 1.3 years, while cutting deployment timelines by three to six times in some casesWhy a new g...

Designing the Robot That Can Do Anything with Brian Ringley

Aug 19, 2026 57 min

What happens when a robot is no longer built for one fixed task, but can potentially be retasked through software to do thousands of different things? Brian Ringley, HRI Designer at Boston Dynamics, joins Greg for the 150th episode of Machine Minds to explore that question through the evolution of Spot, Atlas, and the software systems that connect increasingly capable robots to the people and environments around them. Brian’s path into robotics is anything but conventional. After starting in architecture, CNC machining, industrial robotic arms, computational design, and construction technology, he found himself working at the intersection of digital models and physical automation. That journey eventually brought him to Boston Dynamics, first to explore construction applications for Spot, then into product management and industrial inspection, and now into human-robot interaction design for Atlas. In this conversation, Greg and Brian explore: How Brian’s background in architecture, digital fabrication, CNC machining, and industrial robot programming shaped the way he thinks about human-machine collaborationWhy construction became an early proving ground for Spot, from reality capture and laser scanning to safety monitoring and project progress trackingThe critical shift from thinking of “the robot as the product” to treating the robot as an invisible physical layer that creates value through the work it enablesWhy collecting more data is not enough, and how vision-language models and generative interfaces could let operators effectively “have a conversation” with factories and construction sitesThe enormous HRI challenge behind Atlas: designing an interaction model for a robot whose potential capabilities are effectively unboundedHow reinforcement learning, behavior cloning, vision-language-action models, reasoning systems, and traditional software tools can work together across the Atlas autonomy stackWhy Brian sees the real promise of humanoids as an economic break...

From Egyptian Ruins to First Responders: The VOTIX Story with Edwin Sanchez

Aug 12, 2026 49 min

From remote drone operations and public safety to hardware-agnostic robotics platforms, VOTIX is building the software layer designed to help organizations coordinate increasingly complex autonomous systems. Edwin Sanchez, founder and CEO of VOTIX, joins Greg to unpack the journey from a simple idea inspired by archaeology and remote tourism to an enterprise platform now supporting drone operations across 16 countries. Drawing on more than two decades in IT, digital transformation, and enterprise software, Edwin shares why great technology alone is never enough, and why timing, resilience, regulation, service, and market fit are just as critical to building a lasting hard tech company. The conversation explores how VOTIX acts as a kind of operating system for drone ecosystems, connecting different hardware, workflows, data sources, and third-party systems through one unified platform. Edwin also explains why public safety has become such an important use case, including how drone-first response programs can dramatically reduce emergency response times without requiring agencies to add more personnel. In this conversation, Greg and Edwin explore: How Edwin’s childhood in Colombia shaped his resilience, entrepreneurial mindset, and willingness to challenge difficult circumstancesThe early fascination with computer viruses and self-replicating software that sparked his interest in how software interacts with machinesLessons from more than 20 years in enterprise IT and digital transformation, including time working with companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and AdobeWhy strong engineering needs to be paired with service, market timing, sales, marketing, and a founder willing to adaptThe unlikely origin of VOTIX, from watching a live camera pointed at the pyramids to imagining remotely operated FPV drones anywhere in the worldWhy the original remote tourism concept was ahead of the market, and how customer feedback pushed VOTIX toward industrial, commercial, and public safet...

Wildlife Whisperer: Inside the AI Built to Talk to Animals with Sára Nožková

Aug 5, 2026 36 min

What if AI could help humans and wildlife coexist by understanding how animals communicate instead of simply trying to scare them away? In this episode of Machine Minds, Greg sits down with Sára Nožková, CEO and co-founder of Flox Intelligence, to explore how artificial intelligence, edge computing, and wildlife science are coming together to reduce collisions between animals and critical infrastructure. From airports and railways to farms and highways, Flox is building technology that listens to, learns from, and responds to wildlife in ways that improve safety for both humans and animals. Sára shares her journey from transportation research at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to founding a company that is pioneering what she calls "wildlife intelligence." She explains how years of AI research evolved into a platform capable of identifying animal behavior, interpreting species-specific communication, and guiding wildlife away from danger without relying on harmful or outdated deterrent methods. In this conversation, Greg and Sára explore: How a background in transportation and infrastructure led Sára to build one of the world's first AI platforms focused on wildlife communicationWhy traditional wildlife deterrents like pyrotechnics, fences, and gunshots often fail, and what a more intelligent approach looks likeHow Flox Edge devices combine computer vision, bioacoustics, and generative AI to detect, identify, and respond to more than 27 wildlife speciesThe concept of the "Wildlife Brain" and how AI learns regional behaviors, dialects, and species-specific responses over timeThe engineering challenges of deploying autonomous AI hardware in some of the harshest environments on Earth, from Arctic winters to Texas summersReal-world deployments protecting airports, railways, farms, livestock, and transportation networks across Europe and North AmericaWhy partnerships with organizations like WWF, Alstom, and transportation authorities are helping validate a...

The Robots Hospitals Urgently Need with Steve Pinto

Jul 29, 2026 59 min

Hospitals are among the most complex logistics environments in the world. Thousands of medications, meals, linens, supplies, and pieces of equipment must move through crowded buildings every day, often using manual processes, walkie-talkies, spreadsheets, and staff pushing carts between departments. Steve Pinto, CEO of CTRL Robotics, joins Greg to explore how purpose-built robots can improve the internal movement of hospital supplies while giving healthcare workers more time to focus on patients. Steve’s path into robotics began with entrepreneurship, augmented reality, virtual reality, and enterprise software. A project deploying service robots at South Africa’s Hotel Sky exposed him to the enormous gap between impressive robotics demonstrations and systems that can operate reliably in real environments. That experience led him and his co-founder to launch CTRL Robotics. Today, the company is focused on building the hardware, software, digital twins, and infrastructure required to automate hospital logistics from the ground up. In this conversation, Greg and Steve explore: Steve’s journey from growing up around tools and family businesses in South Africa to building AR, VR, software, and robotics companiesHow a hotel robotics deployment revealed the limitations of existing robots, integrations, APIs, and elevator control systemsWhy CTRL Robotics narrowed its focus to healthcare after working across multiple industries and global marketsThe hidden scale of hospital logistics, including the meals, medications, linens, waste, equipment, and supplies required to support hundreds or thousands of patientsWhy Steve compares a hospital to an Amazon fulfillment center with significantly more people, greater complexity, and no ability to stop operationsThe bottom-up approach to healthcare automation, focused on moving everyday items rather than developing surgical or diagnostic systemsWhy hospital corridors are well suited to mobile robots, even though most carts and equipme...

No Cab, No Driver, New Rules for Freight with Eyal Cohen

Jul 22, 2026 49 min

Autonomous trucking has long focused on retrofitting yesterday's vehicles. Humble Robotics is taking a different path by reimagining freight from the ground up. Founder and CEO Eyal Cohen joins Greg to share why the future of logistics won't simply be autonomous trucks, but purpose-built electric freight platforms designed specifically for a world where vehicles move seamlessly from dock to dock without human intervention. With more than two decades building breakthrough technologies across electric vehicles, autonomy, and robotics, Eyal has witnessed multiple waves of innovation from inside companies ranging from startups to Apple and Uber. Drawing on those experiences, he explains why building transformative hard tech requires more than exceptional engineering. It demands patient capital, uncompromising hiring standards, rapid iteration, and a team united by trust. In this conversation, Greg and Eyal explore: Why Humble Robotics rejected traditional truck designs in favor of a purpose-built autonomous freight platformThe vision for fully autonomous dock-to-dock freight movement and what it could mean for supply chainsHow simplicity in vehicle design unlocks improvements in cost, payload capacity, reliability, and operational efficiencyWhy freight's labor challenges are driven more by long-term workforce shortages than immediate job displacement, and how autonomy can help fill growing capacity gapsLessons from two decades across electric vehicles, autonomous systems, startups, Apple, and Uber that shaped Eyal's approach to company buildingWhy culture, trust, and hiring exceptional people across every function are more important than technology aloneHow Humble Robotics built its first vehicle at remarkable speed while maintaining an uncompromising commitment to safety and engineering qualityThe dangers of premature scaling in hard tech and why founders should prioritize customer feedback before optimizing for production volumeWhy patient investors like Eclipse under...

Investing in the Future of Physical Industry with Scott Walbrun

Jul 15, 2026 53 min

Scott Walbrun brings a unique perspective to venture capital. Having started his career inside the automotive industry before moving into investment banking and venture, he has spent years helping deep tech founders navigate one of the hardest challenges in robotics: turning impressive technology into repeatable, scalable businesses. As Principal at BMW i Ventures, Scott sits at the intersection of physical AI, robotics, manufacturing, industrial software, and advanced materials. In this conversation, he joins Greg to discuss what separates great robotics companies from great robotics demos, why commercial urgency often matters more than technical perfection, and how founders can build businesses that survive the long road from prototype to widespread deployment. Greg and Scott also explore how AI is reshaping the physical world, why venture investors are increasingly focused on real-world reliability over flashy demonstrations, and what founders should understand before raising institutional capital in today's deep tech landscape. Highlights: Scott's journey from automotive finance and investment banking to becoming a venture investor focused on robotics, mobility, and deep techWhy so much breakthrough technology never makes it from the lab into commercial markets, and what successful founders do differentlyHow BMW i Ventures evaluates Series A and B companies across physical AI, robotics, industrial software, advanced materials, and manufacturing technologiesWhy commercial validation is just as important as technical validation when building a venture-scale companyThe hidden costs of deploying robotics at scale, including maintenance, field service, reliability, and total cost of ownershipWhat investors really mean when they ask about repeatability, and why one successful pilot is rarely enoughHow physical AI is moving beyond hype into real applications across manufacturing, quality inspection, warehouse automation, and enterprise operationsThe biggest mistakes ro...

Inside the Hidden Layer of Robotics with Simone Gianotti

Jul 8, 2026 47 min

From surgical robots and autonomous underwater vehicles to humanoids and space exploration, motion control is one of the invisible technologies making modern robotics possible. Yet despite its critical role, it's often overlooked until something goes wrong. Simone Gianotti, Application Engineer Manager at Elmo Motion Control, joins Greg to explore what it takes to deliver precision, reliability, and flexibility across some of the world's most demanding robotic applications. Drawing on a career that spans aerospace engineering, automation, sales, and technical leadership, Simone shares why successful robotics companies know when to build, when to buy, and why solving customer problems often matters more than finding the perfect engineering answer. In this conversation, Greg and Simone explore: Why motion control sits at the heart of high performance robotics, from medical devices and humanoids to subsea vehicles and planetary roversThe common engineering challenges that appear across radically different robotic platforms, including tuning, reliability, electrical noise, and thermal managementWhy many robotics startups lose valuable time trying to build every subsystem themselves instead of focusing on their core innovationHow products that perform perfectly in the lab can encounter unexpected problems once they reach real world deploymentsThe importance of designing for safety, scalability, and future product generations from the very beginning rather than retrofitting laterWhat separates exceptional application engineers, combining deep technical expertise with customer empathy and collaborative problem solvingThe robotics markets seeing the strongest momentum today, including medical robotics, subsea systems, and humanoid platformsHow AI is changing robotics development and why many companies are shifting their focus toward building intelligent software rather than complete robotic systemsThe ongoing debate around humanoid robots versus more task specific designs,...

Why the Future of Robotics Runs on Orchestration with Saurabh Gupta

Jun 24, 2026 47 min

Warehouse automation is entering a new phase. The challenge is no longer building individual robots. It's coordinating fleets of robots, software systems, and human workers into a seamless, intelligent operation. Saurabh Gupta, Chief Technology Officer at GreyOrange, joins Greg to explore why orchestration is becoming the defining layer of modern warehouse automation. Drawing on a career that spans Apple, Amazon, educational robotics, healthcare, and autonomous systems, Saurabh shares lessons from helping scale technologies that bridge the gap between technical complexity and real-world usability. From working on the first iPhone production line to leading the evolution of GreyOrange from a robotics company into a warehouse orchestration platform, Saurabh offers a unique perspective on what it takes to move robotics from impressive demos to scalable, reliable systems that deliver business value. In this conversation, Greg and Saurabh explore: Lessons from Apple's product culture and why the best technology is often invisible to the userWhat working on the original iPhone taught Saurabh about vision, product design, and disruptive innovationHow educational robotics revealed the importance of understanding human behavior before building technologyWhy the gap between a robotics demo and a real-world deployment remains one of the industry's biggest challengesThe transition from viewing robotics as a hardware problem to understanding it as an orchestration problemGreyOrange's evolution from warehouse robot manufacturer to software platform coordinating robots, humans, conveyors, and automation systemsWhy vendor-agnostic orchestration is critical for the future of warehouse automationHow AI creates practical value through exception handling, prediction, and real-time operational decision-makingThe role of data in building warehouse "world models" capable of anticipating disruptions before they happenWhy fully autonomous warehouses may be the wrong goal and what highly orc...

Humanoids Beyond the Hype with Jide Akinyode

Jun 18, 2026 48 min

Humanoid robots are moving beyond flashy demos and into some of the hardest environments on Earth: shipyards, energy sites, manufacturing floors, construction projects, and other industrial settings where skilled labor is scarce and the work is often dangerous, physically demanding, and difficult to automate. Greg sits down with Jide Akinyode, co-founder and COO of Persona AI, to unpack what it really takes to build humanoids for heavy industry. Jide traces his path from NASA Johnson Space Center, where he started at 19 and spent a decade working on advanced dexterity, robotic astronauts, humanoids, and mobile manipulators, to Nauticus Robotics, where he helped bring robotic manipulation into harsh subsea environments. Now at Persona AI, Jide is focused on building industrial humanoids that can do real work in places where traditional automation struggles. The conversation explores why shipbuilding is such a compelling first market, why the humanoid form factor matters in cluttered human-built environments, and what robotics companies often underestimate about deployment, maintenance, workflow integration, and customer adoption. Highlights: Jide’s path from NASA Johnson Space Center to Nauticus Robotics, and how building robots for space and subsea environments shaped his view of commercial robotics.What changed in 2024 that shifted him from humanoid skeptic to founder, including stronger component supply chains, better simulation tools, reinforcement learning, behavior mimicry, and embodied AI.Why Persona AI is starting with heavy industries like shipbuilding, energy, construction, and manufacturing rather than homes, offices, or retail environments.The labor gap in skilled trades, including welders, grinders, painters, and fabricators, and why Persona sees humanoids as an alternative labor solution for industrial operators.Why humanoids do not need to look human, but do need the mobility, dexterity, and flexibility to work in spaces designed around human bodies an...

Making Material Movement Autonomous with Michael Lawrence

Jun 10, 2026 44 min

Autonomous forklifts and pallet jacks may generate plenty of headlines, but the real challenge isn't building robots that can move. It's building solutions that fit seamlessly into existing operations, deliver measurable ROI, and earn customer trust over years of deployment. Michael Lawrence, Director of Sales and Business Development at Anantak Robotics, joins Greg to discuss what it actually takes to bring autonomous material handling systems into warehouses and manufacturing environments. Drawing on a career that spans electrical engineering, entrepreneurship, robotics, and commercial strategy, Michael shares why successful automation is as much about partnerships, process design, and customer education as it is about technology. At Anantak Robotics, Michael helps bridge the gap between technical capability and operational reality, helping customers deploy autonomous tuggers, pallet jacks, and forklifts that solve real-world material movement challenges without forcing facilities to redesign how they work. In this conversation, Greg and Michael explore: Why many robotics companies underestimate the importance of business ecosystems, service networks, and partnerships when bringing automation to marketThe lessons Michael learned building his first autonomous construction equipment company and how they shaped his view of commercializationWhy warehouse automation sales cycles often take years, not months, and what separates successful deployments from stalled pilot projectsHow Anantak approaches autonomous material handling with tuggers, pallet jacks, and forklifts designed for existing warehouse and manufacturing environmentsThe importance of fitting into customer workflows rather than forcing facilities to adapt to the technologyWhere autonomous material movement delivers the fastest ROI and why clearly defined operating procedures accelerate adoptionWhat "practical autonomy" looks like in messy, real-world environments filled with variability, edge cases, and imp...

Building the Foundation Model for Construction with Francesco Iorio

Jun 3, 2026 46 min

Construction is one of the world’s largest industries, yet much of the design process still depends on manual coordination, long hours, and workflows that struggle to keep pace with growing project complexity. Francesco “Frio” Iorio, co-founder and CEO of Augmenta, joins Greg to explore how AI-native design tools could fundamentally reshape the future of construction, engineering, and collaboration across the built environment. Before founding Augmenta, Frio spent years working in computational science, generative design, and advanced AI systems at Autodesk Research. His experience applying artificial intelligence to manufacturing, aerospace, and simulation eventually led him toward one of the hardest design problems imaginable: construction. At Augmenta, he and his team are building AI systems capable of generating detailed construction blueprints for electrical systems and eventually entire buildings, helping contractors and engineers dramatically compress timelines while reducing burnout and coordination overhead. In this conversation, Greg and Frio explore: Why construction presents a fundamentally different AI challenge than software or manufacturing, and why design in the built environment has “no amortization”How Augmenta’s AI generates construction-ready electrical blueprints from scratch, similar to how AI coding agents generate softwareWhy building design is ultimately a geometry, constructability, and real-world reasoning problem rather than a language problemThe hidden complexity of “unwritten rules” in construction, and how AI must learn the field knowledge that experienced foremen and electricians develop over decadesHow AI-driven design can reduce weeks of coordination work into days or even hours on hospitals, data centers, and other mission-critical infrastructure projectsWhy contractor burnout, labor shortages, and compressed schedules are accelerating demand for AI-powered workflowsThe challenge of building trust with contractors and field teams,...

Robots Don’t Replace Work. They Redesign It. — with Michelle Lo

May 27, 2026 41 min

As robotics and AI reshape manufacturing, the hardest challenge is often not the technology itself. It is helping people, processes, and entire organizations successfully adapt to it. GrayMatter Robotics is tackling that challenge head-on by building AI-powered automation systems designed for real-world manufacturing environments where variability, human expertise, and operational complexity are everywhere. Michelle Lo, Director of Customer Strategy and Success at GrayMatter Robotics, joins Greg to discuss what it actually takes to deploy automation in high-mix manufacturing environments. Drawing from her background in electric vehicles and industrial automation, Michelle shares why successful robotics adoption depends just as much on customer alignment, operator trust, and long-term partnership as it does on the robots themselves. Greg and Michelle explore the realities of manufacturing transformation, from backlog-driven demand and workforce shortages to the nuanced collaboration between humans and robots on the factory floor. They also unpack why configurable automation platforms are enabling faster deployment cycles, how manufacturers evaluate ROI beyond labor replacement, and why “perfect” automation is not always what customers actually want. Highlights: Michelle’s journey from EVs and automotive manufacturing into customer strategy and robotics at GrayMatter RoboticsWhy automation adoption is a long-term transformation journey rather than a one-time deploymentThe hidden labor shortages driving demand for automation across industries like aerospace, specialty vehicles, and industrial manufacturingHow GrayMatter Robotics partners directly with operators during deployment to improve adoption and long-term successThe difference between configurable automation platforms and fully custom systems and why deployment speed mattersWhy manufacturers evaluate robotics based on throughput, consistency, quality, and capacity rather than simple labor replacementLessons from...

Conviction Before Consensus - Outlander VC with Paige Craig

May 20, 2026 52 min

From bootstrapping a defense intelligence startup with five credit cards to backing some of the most ambitious robotics and autonomy companies in the world, Paige Craig has built his career around one core belief: exceptional people matter more than polished ideas. In this conversation, Paige Craig, founder and managing partner of Outlander VC, joins Greg to unpack how his unconventional path through the Marine Corps, intelligence work, and entrepreneurship shaped his philosophy as an investor. Paige shares why he spends more time analyzing founders than products, how his team evaluates leadership under chaos, and why physical AI and robotics will define the next two decades of innovation. The discussion also dives deep into the realities of robotics deployment, the hidden complexity behind autonomy, and what separates founders who can survive the brutal transition from prototype to real-world scale. Highlights: Paige’s journey from a difficult childhood and military service to building and bootstrapping a multi-hundred-million-dollar intelligence companyWhy Outlander VC invests at the “pre-conception” stage, backing founders before products or customers existThe 38-point founder framework Outlander uses to evaluate vision, intelligence, character, and executionWhy great founders often emerge from hardship, high agency, and an obsession with solving problemsThe loneliness of leadership and why Paige believes the best investors act as true problem-solving partnersHow Outlander structures conviction-driven investing, including single-partner authority to write early checksWhy physical AI, robotics, and automation are entering a massive growth cycle driven by AI, manufacturing reshoring, and falling hardware costsThe biggest differences between investing in robotics versus pure software startupsWhy cheap, rapidly deployable robots often outperform “exquisite” high-cost systems in the race toward autonomyLessons from backing Coco Robotics and Havoc AI, including the rea...

Building Robots People Trust: The Andromeda Vision with Grace Brown

May 13, 2026 41 min

From engineering-first robots to emotionally intelligent companions, Andromeda Robotics is redefining what human-robot interaction can look like in the real world. Grace Brown, founder and CEO of Andromeda Robotics, joins Greg to share her journey from a STEM-obsessed student in Australia to building one of the most distinctive companies in the humanoid robotics space. What started as a response to isolation during COVID has evolved into Abby, a social companion robot designed to bring meaningful connection into aged care environments. Rather than optimizing for flashy demos or industrial efficiency, Grace and her team are focused on something far more complex: building robots that people trust, relate to, and genuinely care about. In this conversation, she unpacks why emotional intelligence is the missing layer in robotics, how design and psychology shape adoption, and what it will take for humanoids to scale in human environments. Highlights: Grace’s early path into engineering and how a clear passion for math, physics, and problem-solving led her toward robotics from a young ageThe founding story of Andromeda Robotics and how strict COVID lockdowns in Australia exposed the real-world impact of lonelinessWhy Abby was designed as a character, not a tool, and how Pixar-inspired design principles drive trust and adoptionThe overlooked challenge of social acceptance in robotics and why capability alone is not enough to succeed in human environmentsReal-world deployments of Abby in aged care facilities and what the team has learned from observing how people actually interact with robotsThe importance of personalization in human-robot interaction, from voice tuning to behavioral adaptation for individual usersWhy emotional intelligence and “social awareness” will be critical for all robots working alongside humans, even outside consumer settingsThe interdisciplinary nature of building social robots, combining engineering, animation, healthcare insight, and operationsHow...

Rethinking Defect Detection in Modern Manufacturing with Matt Puchalski

May 6, 2026 49 min

From autonomous vehicles to factory floors, a new wave of vision technology is transforming how manufacturers think about quality. Bucket Robotics is at the center of that shift, bringing simulation-driven inspection systems to an industry long reliant on manual checks and outdated tooling. Matt Puchalski, founder and CEO of Bucket Robotics, joins Greg to share how his experience in self-driving cars shaped a fundamentally different approach to quality inspection. Instead of relying on expensive hardware or months of data collection, his team is using CAD-based simulation to generate training data instantly, unlocking faster deployment, lower costs, and more scalable automation. We explore why quality inspection remains one of the most painful bottlenecks in manufacturing, how legacy vision systems have failed to keep up, and what it takes to build robots that actually work outside of polished demos. Highlights: Matt’s journey from Georgia Tech and Michelin to autonomy startups and ultimately founding Bucket RoboticsWhy quality inspection is still one of the most manual, inconsistent, and frustrating parts of manufacturingThe core insight behind Bucket: applying self-driving car vision systems to factory environmentsHow CAD-based simulation replaces months of data collection with minutes of synthetic training dataThe “sim-to-real” challenge and why perception in changing lighting and environments is harder than it looksWhy most vision systems fail in production and how Bucket is designed for real-world robustness from day oneLessons from early market assumptions, including why medical device manufacturing was not the right starting pointThe economics of inspection: balancing cost, speed, and accuracy across high-mix and high-volume environmentsWhat makes a strong customer fit, from ambiguous defect definitions to expensive rework caught too lateCommon objections from manufacturers burned by legacy vision systems and how simulation changes the equationWhy labor short...

Building Factory SuperIntelligence with Ariyan Kabir

Apr 29, 2026 57 min

From disaster response inspiration to reimagining the backbone of global manufacturing, GrayMatter Robotics is tackling one of the largest untapped opportunities in automation: bringing true autonomy to the 90% of factory work still done by hand. Ariyan Kabir, co-founder and CEO of GrayMatter Robotics, joins Greg to share how a firsthand experience with an earthquake in Bangladesh sparked his mission to build intelligent machines that can take on dangerous, tedious work. What started as a question about why robots were not helping in high-risk environments has evolved into a company building “factory superintelligence,” a full stack physical AI platform designed to transform how goods are made. In this conversation, Ariyan breaks down why traditional robotics has struggled in high variability environments, how GrayMatter is bridging the gap with multimodal sensing and foundation models for manufacturing, and why solving these challenges is critical not just for productivity, but for economic resilience and national security. Highlights: Ariyan’s journey from aspiring astronaut to robotics founder, and how a real world disaster shaped his mission to build intelligent, helpful machinesThe hidden reality of manufacturing, with nearly 90% of production still manual despite decades of automationThe core problem GrayMatter is solving, enabling robots to adapt to high variability in materials, environments, and processesWhy physical AI requires more than vision alone, and how multimodal sensing unlocks real world autonomyStarting with sanding as a strategic wedge, then expanding into grinding, painting, blasting, and inspection through transferable learningThe power of data, building one of the largest manufacturing datasets to train foundation models for materials and processesRobot scientists and domain specific AI agents that compress process optimization timelines from months to daysHow optimizing human, robot, and AI workflows can drive massive gains, including tripli...

From Robots to Revenue: Marketing That Actually Works in Automation with Kait Peterson

Apr 22, 2026 52 min

Warehouse automation is no longer a question of if, but when. As supply chains face growing pressure from labor shortages, unpredictable demand spikes, and rising customer expectations, robotics is becoming a critical lever for speed, accuracy, and resilience. Kait Peterson, VP and Head of Marketing at Locus Robotics, joins Greg to break down how modern warehouse automation is evolving from rigid, capital-intensive systems into flexible, scalable solutions that can adapt in real time. Drawing on 15 years in supply chain technology, Kait shares how robotics, data, and physical AI are reshaping fulfillment operations and why the next wave of adoption will look very different from the last. Kait brings a unique perspective at the intersection of marketing, robotics, and human-centered leadership. From making hundreds of cold calls selling warehouse software early in her career to helping scale one of the most recognized brands in warehouse automation, she has seen firsthand how the industry has shifted from skepticism to rapid acceleration. Now at Locus Robotics, she helps translate complex automation systems into clear business value while championing greater inclusion across the tech ecosystem. In this conversation, Greg and Kait explore: Kait’s journey from supply chain SaaS into robotics and how early exposure to warehouse operations shaped her approach to marketing and leadershipWhy flexibility is becoming the defining advantage in warehouse automation, especially for brownfield facilities that cannot afford disruptionHow Locus Robotics differentiates through its Robots as a Service model, combining deployment, maintenance, and continuous optimization into a single offeringThe role of physical AI and why data from billions of robot interactions is becoming a competitive moat in modern automationWhat success looks like for customers, from improved throughput and accuracy to better worker retention and operational scalabilityWhy marketing in robotics is fundamentall...

The First In-Person Machine Minds with Flyhound, Modovolo, Flox Intelligence, and Aerialoop

Apr 15, 2026 32 min

A rare in-person episode brings together four founders building at the frontier of drones, autonomy, and physical AI. Recorded live from the Drones and Robotics AI Summit in New York, this conversation spans search and rescue, wildlife protection, aerial logistics, and next-generation drone platforms—offering a real-time snapshot of where the industry is heading. From detecting phones in disaster zones to decoding animal communication, deploying drone delivery networks at city scale, and rethinking the cost-performance curve of aerial systems, each founder shares how they are tackling hard, real-world problems—and what it takes to move from prototype to deployment. In this conversation, Greg speaks with Manny Cerniglia (Flyhound), Sara Nozkova (Flox Intelligence), Santiago Barrera (Aerialoop), and Justin Call (Modovolo) about: How Flyhound is turning everyday devices into life-saving signals by enabling drones to locate and identify phones, even without cell service, for search and rescue and disaster responseWhy radio frequency complexity remains one of the hardest challenges in real-world deployment, and how environmental factors shape system performanceHow Flox Intelligence is using AI to decode animal communication and prevent human-wildlife conflicts across airports, railways, and industrial sitesThe shift from drone-based systems to edge-deployed stationary units, and what it takes to move from research to validated, real-world impactWhy physical AI startups face unique hurdles in funding, scaling hardware, and bridging the gap between prototype and productionHow Aerialoop built a “metro system in the sky,” operating high-frequency drone logistics networks and moving everything from food to medical samples in dense urban environmentsLessons from scaling to hundreds of daily drone flights, including what breaks first in operations, manufacturing, and trainingThe importance of regulatory collaboration—and how working alongside governments can accelerate deployme...

From Models to Machines: Building AI That Actually Delivers with Ash Saxena

Apr 8, 2026 47 min

From early experiments with dismantled electronics to building AI systems that power real-world machines, Ash Saxena has spent decades at the intersection of research, entrepreneurship, and applied intelligence. Now, as Founder & Chief AI Officer of TorqueAGI, he is focused on one of the most ambitious challenges in technology: enabling robots to perform meaningful work in the physical world. Ash brings a rare depth of experience, from his PhD work at Stanford alongside Andrew Ng to founding and scaling multiple AI-driven companies. His perspective cuts through the noise of today’s AI hype cycle, offering a grounded view on what is actually working, what is misunderstood, and where the real opportunities lie in robotics and embodied intelligence. We explore how the shift from data-driven AI to reasoning-based systems is reshaping robotics, why most companies are approaching the problem the wrong way, and what it takes to move from impressive demos to reliable deployment in the real world. Highlights: Ash’s journey from building robots as a child to leading AI innovation across academia and industry, including early work on deep learning for roboticsKey inflection points that led him to found multiple companies, including applying AI to unlock access to credit through CatapultWhy “technology-first” companies often fail and the importance of aligning AI with real customer demand and ROIThe evolution of AI from statistical models to deep learning to today’s foundation models and reasoning-based systemsWhy the biggest shift in AI is not better models, but dramatically faster time to deployment from years to days or weeksWhat Torque AGI is actually building: end-to-end robotic “skills” that combine foundation models, agents, and real-time infrastructureWhy data collection at massive scale may not be the answer and how useful systems can be built with far less data than expectedThe gap between AI demos and real-world deployment, and why most demonstrations fail outside co...

The Future of Hardware Starts in the Browser with Matthias Wagner

Apr 1, 2026 49 min

Hardware has long lagged behind software in speed, accessibility, and iteration. But that gap is starting to close. Matthias Wagner, founder and CEO of Flux, joins Greg to unpack how AI is transforming electronics design from a slow, manual, and fragmented process into something far more collaborative, automated, and accessible. After years at Facebook and a deep frustration with legacy hardware tooling, Matthias set out to build what he calls the first AI hardware engineer. A system that can help anyone design, iterate, and manufacture electronics with the speed and flexibility of modern software. From rethinking PCB design workflows to enabling entirely new classes of builders around the world, this conversation explores what happens when hardware finally gets its GitHub moment. In this conversation, Greg and Matthias explore: Matthias’s journey from early software engineering to Facebook and ultimately founding Flux to tackle stagnant hardware design toolingWhy hardware has lagged decades behind software in collaboration, automation, and developer experienceHow Flux acts as an AI hardware engineer, guiding users from concept to schematic to manufacturing-ready designThe inefficiencies of traditional PCB design and how AI can consolidate complex systems into single, optimized boardsWhy building in the browser unlocks real-time collaboration, faster iteration cycles, and continuous product improvementHow Flux integrates supply chain data directly into the design process to avoid costly delays and redesignsThe shift from waterfall hardware development to more agile, software-like workflowsWhy democratizing hardware will unlock millions of new builders, not just make existing engineers more productiveReal-world examples of non-traditional users building hardware, including farmers creating custom automation systemsWhere AI fits across the hardware stack, from component selection to simulation and layout optimizationThe reality of building a deep tech startup, includi...

Turning Infrastructure Into Data: How Gecko Robotics Is Rewriting Industrial Inspection with Ed Bryner

Mar 25, 2026 51 min

From climbing robots inspecting boiler tubes to AI-powered platforms optimizing the world’s most critical assets, Gecko Robotics is redefining how we understand and maintain the infrastructure that powers modern society. Ed Bryner, Chief Technology Officer at Gecko Robotics, joins Greg to unpack how his journey from hands-on engineer to technical leader has been shaped by a deep focus on applied engineering, mission-driven teams, and building technology directly in the real world. With roots in robotics competitions, defense work, and industrial systems, Ed brings a uniquely grounded perspective on what it takes to move from prototype to production in some of the harshest environments on earth. We explore how Gecko is building a vertically integrated stack from robot to cloud, why infrastructure health data is the missing layer in industrial decision-making, and how continuous inspection is unlocking entirely new ways to operate, maintain, and extend the life of critical assets. In this conversation, Greg and Ed get into: Ed’s path into robotics, from a family of engineers to high school competitions that sparked a passion for building at the intersection of hardware and softwareThe founding story of Gecko Robotics, starting with a wall-climbing robot designed to inspect boiler tubes and eliminate dangerous manual inspectionsHow Gecko evolved from a robotics company into a data and AI platform creating “health records” for industrial infrastructureWhy infrastructure inspection has historically been so challenging, from scale and complexity to reliance on manual, high-risk human laborThe power of multimodal data collection, combining ultrasound, LiDAR, and visual data to create high-fidelity digital twins of critical assetsWhat it means to build and deploy robots in extreme environments like power plants, submarines, and refineries and why lab-only development fails in the real worldHow continuous data collection, even while assets are operating, is transforming main...

The Universal Layer for Robot Fleets with Aldus von der Burg

Mar 18, 2026 50 min

Mobile robots are rapidly spreading across warehouses, hospitals, factories, and beyond. But as fleets grow and companies deploy robots from multiple vendors, a new challenge has emerged. The robots often cannot communicate with each other. Founder and CEO Aldus von der Burg joins Greg to discuss the “interoperability gap” in robotics and why solving it could unlock the next wave of automation. Aldus shares the unconventional journey that led him into robotics. After studying automotive engineering and working at startups in Denmark, he explored drone delivery before regulatory hurdles forced a pivot. That experience led to the founding of Meili Robots in 2019, and eventually to a realization that the biggest barrier to scaling robotics was not hardware capability, but the software infrastructure needed to coordinate diverse robot fleets. Today, Meili Robots is building a universal fleet management platform that allows robots from different manufacturers to operate together seamlessly. By taking a hardware-agnostic approach, the company aims to remove friction for operators, integrators, and manufacturers deploying robots across industries. In this conversation, Greg and Aldus explore: Aldus’s path from automotive engineering and drone startups to founding Meili RobotsThe “interoperability gap” preventing robots from different manufacturers from collaborating effectivelyReal-world examples of robot gridlock and how poor coordination creates downtime, safety risks, and lost productivityWhy many robotics companies build great hardware but ship weak or outdated software stacksHow Meili’s platform enables vendor-agnostic fleet management across industries like warehousing, healthcare, agriculture, and miningThe importance of operator independence through configurable tools and no code interfacesWhy lab demonstrations of autonomy rarely survive real-world deployment environmentsLessons learned selling into enterprise and industrial automation markets, including the slow...

Automating the Mundane: The Team Rewriting Everyday Work with Theo Nash

Mar 11, 2026 1 hr 14 min

Humanoid robots are dancing, backflipping, and going viral. But are they ready to do real work? Theo Nash, founder and CEO of Mundane, joins Greg to challenge the hype cycle and refocus the conversation on what robots are actually for: eliminating dull, dirty, and dangerous work while amplifying human capability. From growing up around London auto garages to studying at Stanford and building teams across Palo Alto, Shenzhen, and Vancouver, Theo shares how his path shaped a mission centered on safety, embodiment, and human–robot collaboration. Mundane is not chasing flashy demos. Instead, the team is rebuilding the robotics stack from first principles, with a bold bet on telepresence, tactile sensing, and intuitive control systems that feel less like a video game and more like becoming the robot. This is a deep dive into embodiment, reliability, vertical integration, and why scaling too fast could be the biggest mistake in robotics today. In this conversation, Greg and Theo explore: Why most humanoid demos miss the real question: can the robot do economically valuable work reliably?Mundane’s founding principle that robots should eliminate drudgery, not replace human fulfillmentThe embodiment gap and why teleoperation must feel like true presence, not remote controlProprioception in robotics and what it means to “feel” where a robot’s limbs are in spaceWhy wiping a table is harder for a robot than playing chessThe hidden challenge of reliability, from operator accuracy to hardware consistency between unitsLessons from China’s advanced manufacturing ecosystem and how speed and supply chains shape hardware startupsWhy scaling slowly, even in a hype cycle, may be the smartest long term strategyTelepresence as infrastructure and the vision for a VP of TeleportationHow robots can reduce workplace injuries and remove humans from hazardous environments like oil rigs and disaster zonesWhy Theo believes AI and robotics are collaborators, not replacements for human workersBuild...

Why the Future of AI Won’t Live in the Cloud with Sam Fok

Mar 4, 2026 47 min

What happens when a neuroscientist stops asking why the brain works the way it does and starts building his own version in silicon? Sam Fok, co-founder and CEO of femtoAI, joins Greg to explore the journey from studying neurons to designing ultra efficient AI chips for real world devices. Growing up in a household of scientists, Sam was drawn early to questions about intelligence and consciousness. That curiosity eventually led him from neuroscience labs to Stanford’s Brains in Silicon Lab and into the world of neuromorphic engineering. Today, femtoAI is building brain inspired hardware and software that brings AI out of massive data centers and into everyday products such as wearables, appliances, robotics, and consumer electronics. The goal is simple but ambitious: make AI run efficiently in the real world without straining power grids, supply chains, and balance sheets. Greg and Sam dive into the technical, commercial, and personal pivots required to turn deep research into a scalable company, including the hard decision to rebuild their core platform from the ground up. Highlights: Sam’s path from neuroscience and recording brain signals to building neuromorphic chips at StanfordThe founding story of femtoAI and why timing mattered as AI crossed from research curiosity to commercial forceHow femtoAI enables AI to run directly on devices like glasses, earbuds, appliances, and robots instead of relying on the cloudWhy sparse computation and localized processing, inspired by biology, are key to unlocking efficient edge AIThe massive pivot from PhD era technology to a commercially viable platform built for manufacturability and scaleThe tension between academic incentives and commercial realities, from benchmarks and novelty to reliability and reproducibilityTwo distinct customer profiles: companies that want turnkey AI features and those that want full stack tools to build their own modelsWhy ease of use and integration often matter more than technical eleganceLess...

Beyond the Demo: Building Robotics That Actually Work with Jennifer Kwiatkowski

Feb 25, 2026 48 min

From aerospace engineering to tactile sensing and physical AI, Jennifer Kwiatkowski’s path into robotics was driven by a simple but powerful motivation: taking math and physics off the whiteboard and making them work in the real world. Now an AI Specialist at Robotiq, Jennifer works at the intersection of hardware, software, and customer reality. In this conversation, she joins Greg to unpack what it actually takes to deploy robots that deliver ROI, why integration is often harder than the robot itself, and how the industry can avoid getting lost in hype cycles. Jennifer brings a research background in robotic manipulation and tactile sensing, along with firsthand experience navigating the fragile complexity of physical systems. Her perspective cuts through buzzwords and focuses on what matters: reliability, safety, usability, and long term value for customers. In this conversation, Greg and Jennifer explore: Jennifer’s journey from mechanical engineering at McGill to a decade deep in robotics and AIWhy engineers, not just scientists, are the ones who bring theory into the physical worldThe hidden challenge in robotics: integration can account for 50 to 80 percent of total automation costLessons from building automated pick and place systems for data collection and the real data barriers in physical AIWhat separates shiny robotics demos from systems that actually deploy and scaleWhy vertical focus and application specific reliability win over general purpose promisesThe hard truth about automation: if a human still has to supervise it, you have not automated anythingHow AI meaningfully adds value in unstructured environments, and when it simply adds unnecessary complexityThe importance of setting the right expectations with customers and practicing real customer empathyWhy supply chain and support operations become major bottlenecks when robotics companies scaleUsing OKRs to align teams without creating decision making bottlenecksSafety and privacy concerns as robot...

Scaling Robots Beyond the Safety Cage with Andrew Singletary and Amir Sharif

Feb 18, 2026 48 min

As robots move out of cages and into shared human environments, safety is no longer just about stopping motion. It is about enabling systems to keep moving productively without increasing risk. 3Laws Robotics is tackling one of the hardest problems in autonomy: how to guarantee safety while machines remain in motion. Andrew Singletary, co-founder and CEO, and Amir Sharif, COO of 3Laws Robotics, join Greg to unpack how a decade of academic research in safety critical control evolved into a commercial platform for dynamic safety across robotics, vehicles, and autonomous systems. From warehouse robots and mobile manipulators to aircraft and automobiles, their work aims to make autonomy scalable, certifiable, and trusted in the real world. Andrew traces his path from high school robotics competitions to nuclear engineering at Georgia Tech, a PhD at Caltech, and ultimately founding 3Laws to productize safety technology that companies repeatedly asked him to integrate. Amir brings the operator’s lens shaped by multiple startups and exits, focusing on product discipline, execution, and building an organization that values getting it right over being right. Together, they explore what it actually takes to move beyond academic proofs into functional safety that survives broken sensors, real world uncertainty, and regulatory scrutiny. Highlights: The origin of 3Laws Robotics and the influence of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws on the company’s philosophyWhy traditional industrial safety equates safety with stopping and why that breaks down for mobile robots, vehicles, and aircraftThe concept of dynamic safety and how robots can remain in motion while maintaining established safety guaranteesHow safety events, gridlock, and human resets quietly destroy productivity across robot fleetsThe gap between academic definitions of safety and industry expectations for functional safetyWhy safety must be designed in early rather than bolted on at the end of developmentHow 3Laws works with bot...

Building the Brain Behind the Next Generation of Robots with Nikita Rudin

Feb 11, 2026 45 min

From academic breakthroughs in legged locomotion to building a horizontal AI platform for millions of robots, Flexion Robotics is taking on one of the hardest problems in the field: how to make robots learn, adapt, and scale in the real world. Nikita Rudin, co-founder and CEO of Flexion Robotics, joins Greg to share his journey from growing up in Switzerland with dreams of space exploration, to pioneering reinforcement learning for robots during his PhD, to helping shape NVIDIA’s simulation tools, and ultimately to founding a company aimed at becoming the “brain” behind general purpose robots. Nikita brings a rare perspective that spans deep research, real-world demos, and early-stage company building. He explains why hand-engineered behaviors and teleoperation do not scale, how reinforcement learning and simulation unlock robustness, and what it really takes to move robotics from impressive demos to economically viable deployments. In this conversation, Greg and Nikita explore: Nikita’s path from physics to engineering to robotics, and why he has always been drawn toward faster real-world impactEarly breakthroughs in neural network controlled quadrupeds and why reinforcement learning became the only scalable path forwardThe hidden human effort behind robotics demos, and why that model cannot support general purpose robotsHow Flexion Robotics is building a horizontal AI software platform to serve as the brain across many robot typesThe role of simulation, reinforcement learning, and the sim-to-real gap in training robots safely and at scaleWhy reinforcement learning leads to more robust systems that can recover from failure rather than collapseThe limits of simulation, where real-world data still matters, and why mixing both is essentialWhy demand for humanoid and general purpose robots is already strong across logistics, manufacturing, and material handlingThe tension between customer engagement and long-term platform development in a frontier technology startupWha...

What Breaks First When Robotics Scales with Joe Harris

Feb 4, 2026 43 min

From gigabytes of robot telemetry per minute to natural language search across multimodal data, Alloy is tackling one of the most underappreciated bottlenecks in robotics: making sense of what robots are actually doing in the real world. Joe Harris, founder of Alloy, joins Greg to unpack how his background in electrical engineering, machine learning, and growth teams shaped a product that helps robotics companies move faster, ship more reliably, and avoid rebuilding the same internal tooling over and over again. What started as frustration with inaccessible data and slow feedback loops has become a platform designed to turn robot data into a shared, searchable source of truth across engineering, validation, and commercial teams. The conversation dives deep into why replay tools break down at scale, how modern LLMs are changing what’s possible with robotics telemetry, and why deciding what not to build is one of the most important skills for early-stage founders. Highlights: Joe’s path from electrical engineering and machine learning research into growth teams at scale, and how feedback loops became a unifying theme across software and roboticsWhy robotics companies are drowning in data but starving for insight, with robots generating gigabytes per minute across video, sensor data, and logsHow Alloy helps teams move beyond one-off replay by enabling cross-sectional analysis, natural language search, and summarized field test reportsThe validation and verification teams who feel the value first, and how faster analysis turns into faster deployments for customersWhy most robotics startups should not build their own telemetry and analysis stack, and how the industry is entering a tooling renaissance similar to early cloud softwareThe importance of pain times frequency when deciding what features to build and what to cutLessons from early mistakes, including why free pilots often fail and how paid pilots create real commitment on both sidesJoe’s philosophy on early hirin...

How Agile Factories Unlock Speed, Customization, and National Resilience with Edward Mehr

Jan 28, 2026 51 min

Manufacturing has long been the bottleneck between imagination and reality. From aerospace to automotive, complex physical products still take years to tool, validate, and produce. Machina Labs is working to change that equation by turning factories into flexible, software-driven systems that can build almost anything, anywhere. Edward Mehr, co-founder and CEO of Machina Labs, joins Greg to unpack his journey from early software obsessions to SpaceX, and ultimately to founding a company focused on rethinking how the world makes metal parts. Drawing from hands-on experience across software, robotics, and aerospace manufacturing, Edward shares why factories themselves are the real product, and how breaking the link between tooling and design unlocks speed, resilience, and creativity. The conversation explores how Machina Labs’ robotic “Robocraftsman” systems combine dexterity, AI-driven learning, and modular deployment to form metal without molds or dies. The result is manufacturing that adapts as fast as software, enabling rapid iteration, distributed production, and entirely new business models. Highlights from the conversation include: Edward’s early fascination with computers and making things, and how hands-on craft and coding shaped his view of the physical and digital worldsLessons from SpaceX on why manufacturing speed, not engineering ambition, is often the true constraint in hardware innovationWhy traditional factories are locked to specific designs and materials, and how Machina Labs is building product-agnostic, software-defined factoriesThe concept of the Robocraftsman, a robotic system that learns like a human craftsperson and adapts processes in real time using data and AIHow Machina Labs captures data from both physical forming and simulation to train models that optimize force, tooling, and process parametersEarly traction in aerospace and defense, including dramatically reducing lead times for legacy aircraft parts that once took years to replaceExpa...

What Venture Capital Really Optimizes For in an AI-Driven World with Peter Harris

Jan 21, 2026 51 min

Venture capital looks glamorous from the outside, but the reality is far more nuanced. From surviving market cycles to backing founders through years of uncertainty, long-term success in venture comes down to judgment, grit, and pattern recognition earned the hard way. Peter Harris, Partner at University Growth Fund, brings a rare perspective shaped by nearly two decades in venture investing, student-led fund models, and firsthand experience navigating both booms and downturns in technology markets . Peter’s path into venture capital started early, influenced by entrepreneurship, real estate investing, and a shift from wanting to be an engineer to seeing business itself as a tool for solving problems at scale. After helping rebuild and operate one of the largest student-run venture funds in the country, he went on to co-found University Growth Fund, a diversified Series A and beyond firm with a mission that blends strong returns, student development, and economic impact. The conversation spans what makes founders investable beyond pitch decks, why fundraising ability is often underestimated as a CEO skill, and how venture dynamics change when markets tighten. Peter also shares how AI is rapidly reshaping creation, distribution, and labor, and why ownership of assets may matter more than ever in the decade ahead. Topics covered include: Peter’s journey from student venture investor to Partner at University Growth Fund and the lessons learned rebuilding a fund from the ground upHow living through multiple market cycles changes how investors evaluate risk, founders, and timingWhy a CEO’s ability to raise capital in both good and bad markets can determine a company’s survivalThe concept of grit in founders and why simply outlasting competitors can be a decisive advantageWhat Peter looks for beyond resumes including earned secrets, founder insight, and lived experienceHow University Growth Fund balances real venture execution with training the next generation of investo...

The Missing Infrastructure Holding Robotics Back with Adrian Macneil

Jan 14, 2026 48 min

Robotics does not stall because the ideas are bad. It stalls because the underlying infrastructure is missing. Adrian Macneil, co founder and CEO of Foxglove, has spent his career inside the systems that power some of the most ambitious autonomous technologies in the world, and he believes the next leap in robotics will not come from a single breakthrough robot, but from making robotics development radically easier for everyone. Adrian’s path spans early work in payments and crypto, a formative chapter at Coinbase, and several pivotal years at Cruise during the early rise of self driving cars. At Cruise, he saw firsthand how much bespoke infrastructure was required to build, debug, and scale autonomy and how every leading AV company was quietly reinventing the same internal tooling. That realization became the foundation for Foxglove: a data and visualization platform designed to give robotics teams the same off the shelf leverage that software startups take for granted. In this conversation, Greg and Adrian unpack: Adrian’s journey from early programming curiosity to building infrastructure at Coinbase and Cruise, and why autonomous vehicles made the value of robotics instantly tangibleWhy robotics development is dominated by custom tooling, siloed data formats, and painful debugging workflows, and how that slows the entire industryThe origin of Foxglove and its mission to provide a shared data platform for robotics and physical AI, from logging and visualization to debugging and analysisWhat makes robotics data fundamentally different, including multimodal sensors, massive data volumes, limited bandwidth, and edge-first constraintsThe creation of MCAP as an open data format, and why interoperability is a prerequisite for robotics to scale beyond a handful of well funded teamsHow Foxglove acts as a single pane of glass for understanding robot behavior across simulations, incidents, and real world deploymentsWhy robotics startups face “death by a thousand paper cuts...

Designing the Human Side of Robotics with Shakir Dzheyranov

Jan 7, 2026 51 min

Robotics doesn’t fail in the field because of hardware alone—it fails when humans can’t understand, trust, or effectively work with the systems they’re given. Shakir Dzheyranov, founder and CEO of HelloRobo, has built his company around that reality. With a background spanning visual arts, motion design, and product leadership at brands like Nike, Shakir brings a rare design-first lens to robotics and automation. After years in traditional design and marketing, he made a deliberate pivot into product design—drawn by the ability to tie design decisions directly to real user problems, business outcomes, and measurable impact. That shift ultimately led him to robotics, where he saw a massive gap between technical capability and human usability. HelloRobo now operates as a specialized product design partner for robotics and automation companies, helping them build market-ready interfaces for robot operations, fleet management, and human–machine collaboration. Rather than chasing flashy MVPs or over-designed “vision concepts,” Shakir and his team focus on interfaces that can actually ship, scale, and be adopted by operators in the real world. In this conversation, Greg and Shakir dive into: Shakir’s journey from art direction and brand design to building a robotics-focused product design firmWhy robotics companies struggle with UX—and why established design patterns often don’t exist yetThe decision to narrow HelloRobo’s focus exclusively to robotics and automationHow contributing to Open Robotics helped establish credibility before commercial tractionWhat makes UX in robotics fundamentally different from consumer softwareDesigning operator interfaces and fleet management systems for complex, safety-critical environmentsLessons from working with Bedrock Robotics, including designing new interaction patterns from scratchWhy talking directly to operators beats copying existing UI patternsThe three traits HelloRobo looks for when hiring designers: product thinking, visual c...

The Missing Architecture Behind Autonomous AI with Jacob Buckman

Dec 31, 2025 51 min

In this episode of Machine Minds, we step beyond today’s transformer-dominated AI landscape and into a deeper conversation about what’s missing on the path to truly autonomous, long-horizon intelligence. Jacob Buckman, co-founder and CEO of Manifest AI, joins Greg to explore why current AI systems struggle with long-term reasoning, persistent memory, and extended task execution—and what it will take to unlock the next paradigm. Jacob’s journey into AI began early, fueled by science fiction, programming, and a fascination with building systems that could do meaningful work autonomously. From studying and conducting research at Carnegie Mellon to working at Google Brain, he watched deep learning unify once-fragmented AI subfields—vision, language, speech—under a single scalable framework. That unification shaped his conviction that the next breakthrough wouldn’t come from incremental tuning, but from rethinking a fundamental architectural bottleneck. At Manifest AI, Jacob and his team are tackling what they believe is the missing piece: scalable long-context intelligence. Their work centers on replacing transformer attention with a new family of architectures called retention models, designed to compress and retain relevant information over time—rather than repeatedly replaying massive histories. The goal: AI systems that can reason, learn, and work continuously over hours, days, or longer. In this conversation, Greg and Jacob explore: Jacob’s path from aspiring scientist to AI researcher and founder—and why curiosity plus first principles thinking matter more than trendsWhy today’s large language models excel at short tasks but break down over long horizonsThe core limitation of transformer attention—and why “attention is all you need” may no longer holdHow retention architectures unify the strengths of transformers and recurrent neural networksWhat it means for an AI system to compress knowledge instead of endlessly appending memoryWhy long-term reasoning, iterative...

Fixing the Last Manual Step in Modern Logistics with Chris Smith

Dec 24, 2025 47 min

In this episode of Machine Minds, we dive into one of the most overlooked choke points in logistics: the loading dock. Chris Smith, founder and CEO of Slip Robotics, joins Greg to unpack why loading and unloading trucks remains one of the most manual, time-consuming processes in modern supply chains—and how Slip is transforming it with autonomous, high-payload mobile robots. Chris brings a rare blend of firsthand operator insight and deep robotics experience. From continuous improvement roles at Cummins, to factory-scale automation at Tesla, to building heavy-payload robots at a previous startup, his career repeatedly exposed the same inefficiency: trucks spending hours being loaded and unloaded for trips that last minutes. Slip Robotics was born from the realization that this problem wasn’t unsolved because it was hard—it was unsolved because no one had redesigned the workflow end-to-end. Slip’s solution is deceptively simple: a large, flat autonomous robot that becomes the staging lane, drives directly into trailers, stays with the freight during transport, and unloads autonomously on the other side. The result is five-minute loads, five-minute unloads, reduced labor, faster throughput, and dramatically improved dock utilization—without modifying trailers or docks. In this conversation, Greg and Chris explore: Chris’s path from risk-averse engineer to founder—and why betting on yourself can be the most rational riskThe real-world pain that inspired Slip Robotics, observed firsthand across manufacturing, warehousing, and factory logisticsWhy docks function as the “physical API” of logistics—and how Slip leverages that instead of fighting itThe technical challenges of moving 12,000-pound payloads up dock levelers and trailer slopesWhy Slip’s robots generate massive ROI despite moving only ~5% of the timeEarly customer deployments, including automotive OEMs cutting lead times in half within weeksHow close, on-site collaboration with early customers shaped a scalable,...

Unlocking Healthcare Efficiency with Physical Intelligence Solutions with Nicholas Kirsch

Dec 17, 2025 52 min

In this episode of Machine Minds, we look at how physical intelligence—the fusion of robotics, automation, and software—can reshape one of society’s most strained systems: healthcare. Director of Software Engineering Nicholas Kirsch joins Greg to break down why hospital pharmacies are essentially “mini warehouses,” how automation is already quietly at work behind the scenes, and what it will take to reach the vision of a fully autonomous pharmacy. Nicholas brings a rare dual perspective: a mechanical engineer turned software leader who spent years in Pittsburgh’s startup ecosystem building mobile manipulation systems, AMRs, and government-funded robotics programs before shifting into healthcare tech. His experience—from garage-stage startups to acquisitions and rebrands—gives him a clear lens on what it takes to scale robots from impressive demos to mission-critical reliability. At Omnicell, he now helps drive software for medication-picking systems, IV-compounding robots, and the next wave of automation designed to return pharmacists and clinicians to the work they trained for: caring for patients. In this conversation, Greg and Nicholas explore: Why hospital pharmacies operate like 24/7 logistics centers—and why automation is overdueThe long, largely unseen history of medication-picking robots (30 years and counting)What the autonomous pharmacy roadmap looks like, and why most hospitals are still at level 1 or 2The hard truth about robotics in healthcare: reliability isn’t a target, it’s a requirementHow systems like Omnicell’s IV compounding and XR2 picking platforms reduce waste, increase traceability, and free clinicians from manual laborLessons from Nicholas’s journey through multiple robotics companies, acquisitions, and pivots—and how software talent evolves within physical systemsWhat he looks for when hiring software engineers in mission-critical environments, including curiosity, culture fit, and growth mindset over rigid credentialsThe promise (and limit...

Building the Future of Robotic Workforce Enablement with Richard Petrazzini

Dec 10, 2025 43 min

In this episode of Machine Minds, we explore what it really takes to build the human infrastructure behind the coming wave of robots. CEO and co-founder Richard Petrazzini joins Greg to unpack how “robotic workforce enablement” can make or break uptime, customer trust, and the long-term success of robotics deployments—especially as robots leave cages, connect to the cloud, and move into human environments. Richard brings an unusually layered background to robotics: he’s a third-generation biochemist who grew up watching labs evolve from manual rabbit and frog testing to fully automated, 10,000-test-per-day facilities. That firsthand view of how healthcare automated over decades now informs how he thinks about robotics support, standards, and scale. After building one of Argentina’s largest labs and co-founding a successful software company, he spent two years doing nothing but researching robotics before launching Robotic Crew, a nearshore “human in the loop” partner for robot fleets. In this conversation, Greg and Richard get into: Why robotics is entering its “lab automation moment” – and what other industries can learn from decades of healthcare and manufacturing automationHow Robotic Crew supports pioneers deploying robots in uncharted territory, from first unit to scaled fleetsThe logic of nearshore support for robots: Latin American talent, daylight operations, and why robotics can’t be treated like asynchronous software outsourcing“Robotears,” tiered support (Tier 1–3 and beyond), and how to build career paths for people who keep robots productive in the fieldThe trade-offs founders face around uptime, ownership of incident data, and when to bring in a partner for supportWhat it feels like when a startup hits real momentum—not hype—and why Richard believes robotics companies will run out of engineers long before they run out of demandA real-world case study improving response and resolution times for autonomous robot kitchens, and what that reveals about proc...

Bridging Hardware Innovation and Business Strategy in Robotics with Milt Walker

Dec 3, 2025 50 min

In this episode of Machine Minds, we look at what really happens when hardware innovation meets business strategy in robotics. Director of Business Development Milt Walker joins Greg to unpack how manufacturers, startups, and ecosystem players can scale robotics responsibly—without getting stuck in proof-of-concept purgatory or pretending they’re “just” software companies. From functional safety to workforce gaps and reshoring, Milt explores the forces reshaping how robots get built, deployed, and trusted in the real world. Milt brings a rare blend of hands-on engineering, ecosystem building, and strategic thinking. From early days fixing XT and 386 machines in a small-town computer shop, through field roles and leadership at Intel and Sick, to helping seed the Atlanta robotics community with RoboGeorgia, he’s consistently sat at the intersection of technology and partnerships. Now at Next Cobot, he focuses on giving robot builders the safety-critical and control platforms they need so they can innovate faster on what makes their systems unique. In this conversation, Greg and Milt explore: Why “alignment” is Milt’s non-negotiable in partnerships—and how it changes the BD conversationThe shift from customization to configuration as a path to real scalabilityHow mid-market manufacturers and smaller warehouses can approach automation differently from the top 10% of global playersThe growing importance of safety platforms and standards as humanoids and advanced AI move closer to the factory floorWhat it actually looks like to build bridges between Taiwan and US robotics ecosystemsMilt’s moonshot fascination with nano-robotics and “bottom-up” fabricationPractical career advice for engineers and technical leaders who want to move into business development and strategy roles in roboticsIf you’re building robots, selling them, or betting your operations on them, this episode will sharpen how you think about partners, platforms, and the long game of automation. Connect with...

Building Deep Tech Ventures Through Strategic Capital with Oliver Mitchell

Nov 28, 2025 50 min

What does it take to guide a robotics startup from a napkin sketch to a $775 million exit? Oliver Mitchell, a venture capital partner at FF Venture Capital and author of "A Startup Field Guide in the Age of Robotics and AI" returns to Machine Minds to share hard-won lessons from the trenches of deep tech investing. From the dramatic rise and fall of Webvan to the triumph of Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), Oliver reveals why product-market fit isn't found in the lab - it's discovered in relentless customer conversations. We explore the pivotal mistakes founders make, why pivoting isn't failure but strategy, and how the right cap table can be the difference between scaling and stalling out. Highlights: The Webvan lesson: How a $800M IPO collapsed because marketing never asked customers what they actually wanted... and how Kiva Systems learned from that failure to build the robots that became Amazon Robotics.The 500-customer rule: Why Oliver insists founders speak to hundreds of potential customers before building, and how CIV Robotics pivoted from drones to terrestrial robots by listening to construction giants like Bechtel.Five rules for automation startups: High utilization, 99.9% reliability, clear payback periods, defensible IP, and knowing your low-hanging fruit—Oliver breaks down what separates successful hardware companies from the graveyard.Culture as a competitive moat: Drawing from Netflix's "keeper test" and Pixar's collaborative creative process, Oliver explains why hiring one superstar beats five mediocre players - and why arrogance has no place in a startup.Cap table strategy: Why raising at an inflated valuation can doom your next round, how to price for competitive interest, and when to choose government grants, corporate VCs, or traditional funds.Defense tech is heating up: Oliver's new focus on Israeli technologies emerging from elite military units, the Golden Dome initiative, and why Apptronik's humanoid robots are built contract-first for shi...

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Podcast details

Created by: Greg Toroosian
Status: Active
Latest episode: Nov 11, 2026
Episodes: 163
Release period: Weekly
Avg. episode length: 47 min
Explicit: No
Language: English

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