Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt.
This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have its “ChatGPT moment” — that day when the shockingly capable chatbot was launched in late 2022. (General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte told Equity earlier this year that a single general foundation model would make much of today’s specialized robotics work redundant, and be that moment.)
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with Vishwanath to discuss where she’s writing first checks as the founder and managing partner of Techable VC. They also talked about what she’s learned as one of the first women executives to spin out of Nvidia and launch her own early-stage firm investing in physical AI across robotics, materials science, and life sciences.
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:03 Amulya’s path from Intel to Nvidia, and why she left
04:39 What physical AI meant in 2018 vs. now
06:12 Beyond dancing robots: industrial and surgical use cases
09:31 What “conscious automation” means
12:12 Cutting through the hype: the “Lego era” of robotics
16:43 Why your VC should be your moat
20:30 Biggest bottlenecks for physical AI founders
22:30 U.S. vs. China in physical AI
25:43 Are humanoids just for entertainment?
28:10 The most promising near-term areas
29:22 Outro
