Amulya Vishwanath, founder and managing partner of Techable Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in physical AI, said that robotics is currently in a “LEGO era” rather than a “ChatGPT moment,” as developers are only creating the basic building blocks for future technological breakthroughs.
Amulya Vishwanath, founder and managing partner of Techable Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in physical AI, said that robotics is currently in a “LEGO era” rather than a “ChatGPT moment,” as developers are only creating the basic building blocks for future technological breakthroughs.
She told TechCrunch in an interview. According to the former engineer and former Nvidia marketer, the industry is currently rethinking basic software and hardware components. Engineers are creating basic elements - robotic arms and actuators, which can later be combined into more complex general-purpose and special-purpose systems.
“Right now, at this very moment, many of the basic software tools and building blocks for robotics are being reimagined, and this is incredibly important for scaling innovation,” said Vishwanath, comparing the current stage to the early days of the Internet and the Industrial Revolution.
A separate challenge for the market remains the struggle for talent. The founder of Techable Ventures emphasized that a significant part of leading specialists is moving to big tech and industry giants such as Anthropic and Nvidia. Because of this, venture funds have to actively help startups find talent in order to remain competitive.
Amulya Vishwanath founded Techable Ventures after nearly seven years as a product marketer at Nvidia. Her portfolio also includes experience as a digital signal processing engineer at Interconnect Systems (later acquired by Molex) and at a company that was later acquired by Intel.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously explained that choosing a humanoid form for robots makes perfect sense because “the world is largely designed for humans.” Doors, keyboards, tools, and workplaces are designed for a certain body type, so a robot that has to move and work in those same spaces should have a similar shape.
