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

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 impact
• Early breakthroughs in neural network controlled quadrupeds and why reinforcement learning became the only scalable path forward
• The hidden human effort behind robotics demos, and why that model cannot support general purpose robots
• How Flexion Robotics is building a horizontal AI software platform to serve as the brain across many robot types
• The role of simulation, reinforcement learning, and the sim-to-real gap in training robots safely and at scale
• Why reinforcement learning leads to more robust systems that can recover from failure rather than collapse
• The limits of simulation, where real-world data still matters, and why mixing both is essential
• Why demand for humanoid and general purpose robots is already strong across logistics, manufacturing, and material handling
• The tension between customer engagement and long-term platform development in a frontier technology startup
• What Nikita looks for in exceptional roboticists, including action-oriented thinking, healthy stubbornness, and strong collaboration
• Underappreciated roles in robotics startups, from infrastructure engineers to data and deployment pipelines
• How Nikita’s leadership style has evolved as the team scaled to more than 40 engineers
• Where the robotics industry risks over-promising, especially around consumer and home robots
• Why hype can be healthy if expectations and timelines remain honest
• Advice for founders on underestimating team size, timelines, and the operational realities of company building
• Flexion’s near-term milestones, including moving from demos to real industrial deployments and making the economics work at scale
• How a successful horizontal robotics platform could accelerate the entire ecosystem

If you are building robots, investing in them, or trying to understand what it will take to move from research breakthroughs to real-world impact, this episode offers a grounded, deeply technical, and forward-looking view of where robotics is headed.

Learn more about Flexion Robotics: https://flexion.ai

Follow Flexion Robotics on LinkedIn and X for updates and technical insights

Connect with Nikita Rudin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikita-rudin

Connect with Greg Toroosian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregtoroosian