Building Deep Tech

🎙️ 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 money too early is a trap, and how soldering wires all night helped him remember why he’s doing this in the first place. He’s not chasing prestige or funding rounds. He’s trying to ship a $9K robot that can do your laundry. We talk about his time at Tesla and Meta, how he thinks about mortality, the power of conviction, why open-source matters, and what it really takes to build hardware that people want to own.

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 platform for logging, querying, and managing robotic-scale data, from raw logs to model training.Niko shares his personal journey from business school in London to engineering in Sweden, to startups in retail, Kenya, and AR. Along the way, he learned the hard truth: physical AI teams are still flying blind when it comes to data. That pain turned into obsession, and obsession turned into Rerun.

🎙️ 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 systems, he made the leap into entrepreneurship and started Extend Robotics.We talk about the early pivots (from drone teleoperation to building lightweight robotic arms) and how the company eventually focused on software, helping users control off-the-shelf robot arms through an easy-to-use VR interface.Chang explains how they’re now using this interface to collect high-quality data for AI training, with real-world pilots in agriculture, EV manufacturing, and satellite servicing. The goal is to go from teleoperation to automation, and to make robot training as accessible as robot control.

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 fusion research to founding a YC-backed robotics company now making headlines with their human-like androids.We talk about why his first startup didn’t work out (and why Plan A to do B never does), how he met his co-founder on the internet, and why moving to Poland turned out to be one of the best decisions for focus and execution.Clone is going against the grain: from hydraulics to neural net control, from soft-body design to building general-purpose robots from scratch.This convo is packed with vision, hard-earned insights, and a founder who’s not afraid to do things differently.Give it a listen. You’ll see why people are paying attention.

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 company doing over $100k MRR.We talk about why he stepped away from managing teams, what he learned from building the wrong products, and how growing up in a finance-savvy family shaped his view on risk. He opens up about burnout, recovering after a family health crisis, and how building in public helped him find both traction and community.He also explains why he stopped sharing revenue online, how the indie hacking scene has changed in the past two years, and what he's building next with more focus and less noise.An honest conversation about starting over, staying hands-on, and building what people actually want.

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 first startup out of moss, he’s always followed ideas that made sense to him, both technically and personally.Today, Victor leads one of the fastest-growing CMMS platforms in robotics, scaling from 1,000 to 10,000+ assets in less than a year. We talk about how he turned hard-won lessons from hardware into a lean software company, why many factories still use pen and paper for maintenance, and how robots can now walk the floor doing condition checks.

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 entrepreneurial story, why he walked away from corporate prestige, and how open-source became his outlet to give back.Also, we get into the limits of current LLMs in robotics, why cloud infrastructure is key for future robot-AI systems, and how Dora is building bridges between hardware-heavy China and software-driven Europe... without VC funding and without ego.Inspiring and refreshingly honest. Give it a listen!

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 importance of deep fundamentals over quick wins, the challenges of moving into leadership, and why soft skills are harder to learn than coding.We also talk about Humanoid’s mission, their wheel-based and legged robot models, and the pragmatic road to commercialisation.We went deep into deep tech, from early system design to what founders often miss when scaling robotics companies. I learned a lot. You might too.

Pedro Milcent, Co-Founder of Deplace AI, shares his fascinating journey from law to deep tech entrepreneurship. He discusses the challenges of data collection for robotics and physical AI, emphasizing the need for large-scale, low-cost solutions. Milcent reflects on the vibrant tech scenes in Los Angeles and Paris and how his international experiences shaped his approach to innovation. He also highlights the importance of building expert teams and outlines his vision for the future of physical AI in Europe, showcasing his bold insights and strategic thinking.

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 beloved open-source robotics platforms, and why openness and modularity were at the core of their vision.After Pollen, Nicolas founded Luos, an open-source framework that makes hardware as agile as software. Though technically powerful, Luos struggled to find a business model, and we explore what he learned from that experience, and why he's now working on a stealth-mode startup building an AI-driven industrial robot ecosystem.This conversation is packed with insight for founders, engineers, and anyone who cares about open systems, deep tech, and what it takes to build (and rebuild) in robotics.