TechFirst with John Koetsier

Robot guard dogs are moving from experiments to serious business. Asylon Robotics has signed a $17 million, five-year deal with security giant Securitas to deploy autonomous robot dogs and aerial drones at critical infrastructure facilities. As far as I can tell, this could be the biggest robot security deal ever. In this episode of NEXT, I chat with Asylon CEO Damon Henry about the big deal, why...

What does it actually take to put 1,000 humanoid robots to work? Hexagon Robotics President Arnaud Robert joins me to explain how the company is moving its Aeon humanoid from pilots and demonstrations into real industrial production, including a plan with Schaeffler that could eventually scale to 1,000 robots. And the big lesson is that scaling humanoids isn't about taking one robot doing one...

What does it actually look like to work with hundreds of AI agents? In this episode of NEXT with John Koetsier, I chat with Steve Ancheta, founder and CEO of Zig.ai, an AI-native platform for relationship-driven sales. Steve explains why what looks like a single AI agent to a user can actually be a swarm of hundreds of specialized agents working behind the scenes, handling copywriting, follow-ups,...

What will the home of 2035 actually look like: One humanoid robot that does everything, or 10 specialized robots, each handling one specific task extremely well? In this episode of NEXT with John Koetsier, I talk with Amber Atherton, serial entrepreneur and investor at Patron, about a very different vision for the future of home robotics. Instead of assuming that every household will eventually ha...

What happens when you combine frontier AI, agentic systems, and quantum computing? In this episode of NEXT with John Koetsier, we chat with Mykola Maksymenko, co-founder and CTO of Haiqu, about how AI agents are dramatically accelerating quantum research and potentially scientific discovery as a whole. Maksymenko shares how an AI system was able to reconstruct months of his own PhD research in a f...

AI is moving beyond text, images, and code. Now it’s learning to read and write -- shall we say program -- DNA.In this episode of NEXT, John Koetsier talks with Eric Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of Radical Numerics, about the rapidly emerging world of biological AI.Nguyen and his team helped create Evo and Evo 2, generative foundation models for DNA, and are now working toward what they call “genera...

Why aren’t hundreds of millions of intelligent robots already operating in the physical world? In this episode of NEXT with John Koetsier, John speaks with Seth Winterroth, partner at Eclipse, about the rapidly changing robotics investment landscape, the rise of physical AI, and the race to build the next generation of autonomous machines. They explore whether the world really needs hundreds of hu...

Can robots learn from the internet the same way ChatGPT learned from text? In this episode, Andrew Wooten, co-founder of Rhoda AI, explains why his company believes the future of robotics isn’t collecting millions of hours of robot data ... it’s learning from internet-scale video. Instead of relying on traditional vision-language-action (VLA) models that require enormous training datasets, Rhoda’s...

My instant first look at 1X’s just-unveiled NEO robot hands. Hot take: they're a massive leap toward truly useful humanoid robots. With 25 degrees of freedom, tendon-driven actuation, tactile sensing, force feedback, and near-human dexterity, these hands can do far more than simple gripping. They can assemble LEGO, pick up tiny screws and coins, plug in a USB-C cable, zip jackets, use tools, s...

Is AI really causing mass layoffs or are CEOs just using AI as a convenient excuse? In this episode, John Koetsier talks with longtime tech journalist, columnist, author, and podcaster Mike Elgan about why the “AI is killing jobs” narrative may be overblown. Elgan argues that many companies are engaging in AI washing: blaming layoffs on AI to make cost-cutting look like innovation. The conversatio...

Humanoid robots are often pitched as factory workers, warehouse assistants, or home helpers. But what if education becomes their biggest opportunity? In this episode, Faraday Future co-CEO Chris Chen explains why K-12 schools, STEM programs, and university research labs could be among the first large-scale adopters of humanoid robots and robot dogs. Chris shares why Faraday Future believes we’re a...

What if airports had self-driving mobility pods that could safely navigate through crowds, just like something out of The Jetsons? Or the Pixar movie Wall-E? In this episode, John Koetsier sits down with Matthew Anderson, CEO of A&K Robotics, to explore the future of autonomous mobility. A&K Robotics is building AI-powered self-driving pods designed to help people navigate airports indepen...

Is AI in education a disaster ... or inevitable. We can easily see that AI is already changing education ... but is it making kids smarter, or just more dependent? In this episode of TechFirst, John Koetsier talks with Navin Gurnani, CEO of Code Ninjas, about how kids can learn to build with AI instead of simply asking ChatGPT for answers. They discuss why coding still matters in the age of vibe c...

What if the next big wave of AI isn’t about robots doing your chores but about robots that understand you? In this episode, we sit down with Colin Angle, co-founder of iRobot and the creator of the Roomba, to explore his bold new venture: Familiar Machines and Magic. After putting over 50 million robots into homes, Angle is now betting on something radically different: a quadruped AI companion des...

AI is everywhere ... except the factory. What does AI-native manufacturing look like? Is it possible? Can AI agents help manufacturers produce more product at better quality? And, maybe also enable onshoring or re-shoring? In this episode, host John Koetsier sits down with Apprentice CEO and founder Angelo Stracquatanio to explore what AI-native manufacturing really means, and why traditional AI m...

What happens when GPS goes down: jammed, spoofed, or completely denied? In this episode of TechFirst, host John Koetsier sits down with Michael Biercuk, founder and CEO of Q-CTRL, to explore one of the most surprising breakthroughs in quantum technology: quantum navigation. While most of the quantum world is focused on computing, Q-CTRL is building something entirely different: AI-powered quantum...

Are AI agents really the future of software — or just the latest wave of hype? In this episode of TechFirst, host John Koetsier sits down with Don Murray, CEO of Safe Software, to break down what’s actually happening with “agentic AI.” From AI-washing and “agent-washing” to real-world use cases in coding, automation, and enterprise software, this conversation cuts through the noise. They explore h...

What if the hardest part of building a humanoid robot isn’t the brain but the hands? Robot hands are half the complexity of a robot, a humanoid robot CEO told me a while back: they're insanely difficult to get right. In this episode of TechFirst, I talk with Kyber Labs co-founders Tyler Habowski and Yonatan Robbins about why dexterity, maybe even more than AI, is the true bottleneck in robotic...

What does the agentic enterprise of tomorrow look like? What happens when AI can build software in hours and agents can run entire business processes? In this episode of TechFirst, John Koetsier sits down with UiPath CEO Daniel Dines and CMO Michael Atalla to unpack one of the biggest shifts in enterprise technology: the rise of the agentic enterprise. We explore whether software is becoming dispo...

NanoClaw is a new agent inspired by OpenClaw, but without the massive security risks you get with OpenClaw. Essentially, it's a safer OpenClaw. What if you could run a powerful AI agent on your own machine: one that can browse, automate tasks, connect to apps, and even manage your workflow ... but without the massive security risks? That’s the idea behind NanoClaw, a lightweight alternative to...

Imagine teaching a robot 1000 tasks in just 24 hours. Imagine teaching robots just like you teach humans. In fact, what if teaching a robot were as easy as showing it once? Humans can learn new skills almost instantly by watching, trying, or receiving a quick explanation. Robots, historically, haven’t been so lucky. Training them often requires huge datasets with real or virtual data, massive engi...

Can we give an AI human emotions? A soul? Can AI truly feel, or will it just act like it does? In this episode of TechFirst, I talk with Vishnu Hari, founder and CEO of Ego AI (backed by Y Combinator and former AI product manager at Meta), about building emotionally intelligent AI characters that persist across games, Discord, chat, and even physical robots. Vishnu survived a violent attack in San...

Is your AI agent running a restaurant — or a factory — while you sleep? In this episode of TechFirst, John Koetsier sits down with Jensen Teng, CEO and co-founder of Virtuals, to unpack one of the boldest (or craziest) visions in tech today: a hybrid economy powered by AI agents, humanoid robots, teleoperation, and blockchain coordination. An economy that may not really need humans for much at all...

Is AI killing creativity ... or just making it easier to be average? 94% of creatives now use AI. But only 11% believe it actually makes them more creative. So what’s really happening? In this episode of TechFirst, John Koetsier sits down with Saeema Ahmed-Kristensen, former head of design engineering research at Imperial College London’s Dyson School and now leader of a £24M research portfolio at...

AI is moving faster than anyone predicted. In a massive new study analyzing 1,000 jobs and nearly 20,000 tasks, Cognizant found that 93% of jobs are already impacted by AI ... with $4.5 trillion in U.S. labor value potentially automatable today. But here’s the twist: AI isn’t replacing entire jobs. On average, only 39% of a role’s tasks can be automated. The future isn’t AI alone: it’s humans plus...