Puru Rastogi

Building AI Models for robot arms | @mowito2 | CMU, IIT-G Alum

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

Most of the world's work still happens with human hands — because robots were too rigid to help.

We started @mowito2 to change that. Robots that learn, not robots that get programmed. Today we're $3M in and just getting started. 🤖⚡
LFG!!🚀🚀

[mowito @mowito2]

Physical AI is here. 🤖⚡

We raised $3M to put robots that learn from demonstrations — not code — on every factory floor.

Already live at Fortune 500 manufacturers.

Led by @VersionOneVC with @All_IN_CAPITAL, Unisol, iSeed, @soumithchintala, @adarshkulkarni & ashish kulkarni

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

Onto Level 2!

[Inc42 @Inc42]

Indian startups raised just $71.9 Mn across 17 deals this week, while the ecosystem also witnessed 4 M&A deals, 2 new VC fund launches and multiple IPO developments 👇

📌 Total funding fell to $71.9 Mn across 17 deals, down 31% from the previous week's $104.6 Mn
📌 Ecommerce remained the top-funded sector, attracting $28.9 Mn across six deals, while Elevate Education's $17.7 Mn round was the week's largest funding deal
📌 Beyond funding, the week saw 4 M&A deals, 2 new VC funds worth ₹4,200 Cr, multiple IPO filings and approvals, signalling sustained activity across India's startup ecosystem

#Inc42 #trending #funding #AI #ecommerce #FundingGalore #startups

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@chris_j_paxton This makes sense, considering after manufacturing, the biggest market for robots is logistics... There will be more and more robots from here on.

[Roan @RohOnChain]

This 2 hour Stanford lecture shows exactly how Stanford trains it's engineers to build AI systems. It's more practical than every Claude tutorial & prompting threads you've seen.

Bookmark & give it 2 hours, no matter what. It'll be the most productive thing you do this weekend.

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

Life update: moved to Detroit to scale Mowito in the US 🇺🇸.

Got my O-1 after being rejected earlier for both O-1 & H1B—this one means a lot.

We’re shifting from proving tech → scaling deployments.

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

Lemon tea with chia seeds... BLR ❤️

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@mowito2 is live at IMTEX 2026! Come and checkout how physical AI is transforming industrial robots.

Location - BIEC, Bangalore

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@animesh_garg @chris_j_paxton May be for talent... But for infra, not really.

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@BostonDynamics ' atlas is scary good! Finally someone is making a humanoid which is better than a human.

Terminator is coming!!!

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

NEWS: Boston Dynamics has just released a new video of its upgraded next-generation humanoid robot called Atlas.

• 4 hour battery. Self-swappable for continuous operation
• 6 feet 2 inches tall
• Weight: 198 lbs
• 56 total degrees of freedom
• Now fully electric, ditching older hydraulic systems
• New lightweight mix of aluminum and titanium components
• 110 lbs weight capacity (66 lbs sustained)
• Can reach up to 7.5 ft
• Constantly evaluates its surroundings and adjusts its posture, balance, and grip in real time
• Hands that can reconfigure as needed. Tactile sensors feed data back into the system, helping apply the right amount of force
• Brain is powered by Nvidia chips

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

Meet our lab's new teammate 🤖✨

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@IlirAliu_ These folks, who pay less, and require customisation are called 'early adopters' . You need 1-2 of them to build your brand and then you can reach out to 'innovators', who can pay higher amount and give volumes.

The art is knowing when to stop.

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

linkedin is not working..... cloudfare, you again?

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

That could be an interesting upgrade. The existing VLA s are slow and give jittery motion. Let's see how effective this would be.

[Jiaming Tang @jmtang42]

Even large VLAs can play ping-pong in real time! 🏓⚡️

In practice, VLAs struggle with fast, dynamic tasks:
• slow reactions, jittery actions.
• demos often shown at 5-10× speed to look “smooth”.

We introduce VLASH:
• future-state-aware asynchronous inference with >30Hz inference frequency for PI0.5
• drop-in to existing VLAs with no extra overhead
• enables PI0.5 / PI0 to play ping-pong and other highly dynamic tasks in real time

📄 Paper: https://t.co/01bKQmMCKs
🔧 Code: https://t.co/NfQ80ASZOK

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@dkhare @tusharUSC I see a lot of it in robotics. Valley based startup are making foundational models for robots, that can be deployed 2-3 years later. We @mowito2, being in India, had sharp focus on applications, and developed foundational models, that can be deployed in factories immediately.

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

Interesting application. Reminds me of @simberobotics robot for shelf scanning in grocery stores.

[Jenn Grannen @jenngrannen]

Meet Scanford 📚🤖: a robot that improves foundation models by doing useful work in the wild.

Deployed for 2 weeks in the Stanford East Asia Library, Scanford scans books, helps librarians, and continually improves the VLM it relies on.

🔗 https://t.co/r2ZXyeKaIf
🧵1/8

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

Cats love me 😊😊

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@bluntinsha Wow, that's rare. You lost it on the bus? My friends lost their car, and they found it on a farm, burnt out, and its video on tiktok ...😅

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@bluntinsha dayum! yeh to dhoka kiya tumne hamare saath .....

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

@HarryStebbings But isn't that true for every trend? Self-driving cars, bitcoin, AI wrappers... You will have 2-3 players in robotics sector... And rest will die

[Puru Rastogi @Puru_Rastogi]

Tesla, deep mind, skild ai and Mowito in one frame