22Astronauts

In this episode, I talk with Brendah Njiru , founder of HOMY Robotics , where she’s building emotionally intelligent humanoid robots for senior living: With a background in neuroscience and Alzheimer’s research at Cornell, Brendah brings a rare scientific depth to robotics. We talk about her upbringing in Kenya, her early obsession with medicine, and what pulled her into AI and hardware. She share...

In this episode, I talk with Lerrel Pinto , Assistant Professor at NYU and one of the most cited researchers in robotics today: His work spans everything from self-supervised learning to robot dexterity, and he's on a mission to make robots generalize the way humans do. We talk about growing up in India, building his own education at IIT, and what led him to Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, and now...

I sit down with Benji Barash , CEO of Roboto AI , to talk Amazon, robotics, and why knowing what to do with your data is key to scaling: Benji spent years at Amazon working on drone delivery, but started to see a growing problem in robotics, the data was piling up faster than teams could make sense of it. He left Amazon to build a solution. Today, Roboto AI helps robotics companies analyze massive...

In this episode, I talk with Madison Maxey , founder of LOOMIA , a company building soft, flexible electronics for everything: Everything? Everything! From robotics to automotive interiors. Maddie’s journey spans fashion school, a Thiel Fellowship, a return to Stanford in her mid-20s to study material science, and a decade of turning prototypes into real-world tech. We talk about growing up with a...

Yesterday, they launched a $299 robot. It looks like a toy, but it opens up a world of AI. Today, I talk to the person who made it real. Matthieu Lapeyre is the founder of Pollen Robotics and one of the most quietly influential roboticists in Europe. He’s been building open-source humanoids long before it was cool, from Poppy to Reachy to Reachy Mini. We talk about how growing up without a tech ba...

In this episode, I talk with Kaan Dogrusoz , Co-Founder and CEO of Weave Robotics , a YC-backed team building Isaac, a personal home robot: Kaan grew up in Istanbul, chased curiosity across physics, art, and engineering, and eventually made his way to Carnegie Mellon, then Apple, where he spent nearly a decade working on robotics and shipping features like Double Tap on the Apple Watch. But someth...

🎙️ I talked with Benjamin Bolte , founder of K-Scale Labs , who left Meta to build something he actually believes in: an open-source humanoid robot! After working on Autopilot at Tesla, he saw the inside of Optimus and decided the big players were getting it wrong. Benjamin walks me through how he built the first robot with Alibaba parts and 3D-printed parts in his apartment, why raising too much...

In this episode, I talk with ⁠ Nikolaus West ⁠, Co-Founder & CEO of Rerun ; their team is building the data stack for Physical AI: We get into the early days of Rerun: how an open-source visualization tool for multimodal data became widely adopted across robotics, spatial computing, and even inside companies like Apple and Meta. But that was just the start. Now, they’re building a full-stack p...

🎙️ I spoke with Chang Liu , founder and CEO of Extend Robotics , a startup developing intuitive VR interfaces to control robot arms and train AI models using real-world data. Chang shares his story from growing up in China to moving to the UK for university, studying at Newcastle and Southampton, and completing a PhD in aerial robotics. After postdoc work at Imperial College on autonomous drone sy...

Took me 2 years to land this one... 🎙️ In this episode, I talk with ⁠ Dhanush Radhakrishnan ⁠, Co-Founder and CEO of ⁠ Clone Robotics⁠: The company building lifelike, musculoskeletal androids that move like humans and could become the next personal computing platform. Dhanush shares how watching Iron Man at 13 sparked a lifelong obsession with tech, leading him from plasma thrusters and nuclear fu...

In Episode #66 , I talk with Tibo LOUIS-LUCAS , founder of Tweet Hunter and Taplio, two SaaS tools he built, scaled, and sold for over $10 million: Tibo shares how he went from a series of startup failures to shipping one new product every week with his co-founder. That process eventually led to Tweet Hunter. What started as a personal tool to grow on Twitter turned into a fast-growing SaaS compan...

In this episode, I talk with Victor Splittgerber , CEO of WAKU Care ; a Berlin-based company redefining maintenance for robots, machines, and automation systems. Victor shares how his early curiosity (and an eBay side hustle selling Star Wars kits at 15) laid the groundwork for becoming a founder. From rowing for Berlin’s national team to studying mechanical engineering in Dresden, to building his...

I talked to ⁠ Haixuan Xavier Tao ⁠, founder of 1ms.ai ⁠ and maintainer of ⁠Dora-rs⁠, a Rust framework linking AI and robotics for modular, cloud-first systems. Haixuan shares his personal journey growing up in a Chinese immigrant family in France, the sense of duty that shaped his career path, and how he went from BCG and BNP Paribas to writing Rust for fun. We talk about his father's entrepre...

In Episode #63 , I talk with Dmitrii Rudnitckii , VP and former CTO at Humanoid , with 25+ years in automation, encryption, computer vision, and robotics: We cover his journey from automating ships in the late 90s to building autonomous factories and now leading one of the most ambitious humanoid robot projects in the UK. Dmitrii shares insights about studying computer science in Russia, the impor...

Episode #62 of Building Deep Tech! With Pedro Milcent , Co-Founder of Deplace AI ; data collection & curation for robotics and physical AI: In this episode, I chat with Pedro Milcent, a French-Brazilian founder building something new in the world of robotics and AI. Pedro’s story starts unconventionally, as he finished high school at 14, went straight to law school, then pivoted to business, e...

In this episode, I talk with Nicolas Rabault , former CTO and Co-Founder of Pollen Robotics , recently acquired by Hugging Face : Nicolas had a rocky start. He struggled in school and took an unconventional path into engineering, driven by a deep obsession with hacking, building, and making things move. He shares the story behind Pollen: how a small research team in Bordeaux built one of the most...

In this episode, I talk with ⁠ Eris Dhionis Sako ⁠, Co-Founder & CEO of Duatic AG ⁠, a robotics startup based in Zurich: Eris shares his journey from growing up in Albania and studying in Greece, to becoming a leading robotics engineer at ETH Zurich. Over the past 8+ years, he’s designed actuators, robotic arms, and more at the Robotic Systems Lab. Now, he’s taking that experience into entrepr...

🎙️ Episode #59 : Willpower, Product Thinking & Building Vention ... with Etienne Lacroix : In today’s episode, I talk with Etienne Lacroix, Founder and CEO of Vention, a company making industrial automation faster, more accessible, and more affordable for manufacturers around the world. Etienne shares the roots of his drive and discipline, shaped by a father who was full of energy and a mother...

In this episode, I talk with Sandor Felber , a Robot Learning Researcher at MIT's CSAIL, where he’s building intelligent control systems for humanoid robots: We talk about how he got into robotics, from electric race cars at Edinburgh University Formula Student to control frameworks for teleoperation and deep reinforcement learning locomotion. Sandor has also worked at Tesla, building actuator...

Episode #57 : Advancing Bionic and Robotic Hands with Ryan Saavedra , CEO & Founder of Alt-Bionics, Inc. In this episode, I talk with Ryan Saavedra, founder and CEO of Alt-Bionics, a company making advanced yet affordable bionic hands for both prosthetics and robotics. Ryan started Alt-Bionics in 2020 while studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Since then,...

In this episode, I talk with Antoine Van Malleghem , a robotics engineer and Co-Founder of Botronics : They are building the next-generation autonomous golf trolley using machine learning, and advanced computer vision. Antoine shares his journey from IT consultancy to robotics entrepreneurship, why he took a pay cut to follow his passion and the technical challenges of developing AI-driven autonom...

My newest guest is Frédéric Legrand, a founding engineer at Phospho (YC W24), an AI company based in Paris focused on making AI robotics more accessible. Frédéric grew up in France but spent nearly a decade in Hong Kong before returning for his higher education. With a passion for building (both in software and hardware), he’s now working on helping machine learning engineers get started with AI i...

In this episode, I talk with Sankaet Pathak , founder of Foundation . Their first product? A humanoid robot built for real-world tasks: Foundation is an advanced technology company developing autonomous machines. Why start with humanoids? To automate labour across manufacturing, logistics, and defence. Sankaet shares his journey from computer engineering and physics at the University of Memphis to...

This week, I talked with Aadeel Akhtar, PhD Akhtar, CEO and Founder of PSYONIC , a company redefining prosthetics with AI-powered bionic limbs: You might have seen him on Shark Tank or heard about PSYONIC’s Ability Hand, an advanced prosthetic that’s setting new standards for accessibility and performance. Aadeel’s story is fascinating. He started out studying neuroscience and medicine and then pi...

In this episode, I talk with Usman Roshan, founder of 7Xrobotics and Associate Professor in AI and Machine Learning at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Usman and his co-founder are building autonomous household robots designed to tackle everyday tasks like dishwashing and laundry folding; turning AI into real, practical solutions for the home. We discuss his journey from academia to robotic...