Sacha Ghiglione

Executive Director Davos Tech Summit. AI & Robotics. love yourself.

[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle.

Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence.

Trust your instincts.
Do the unexpected.
Find the others.

[Paul Walsh @Paul__Walsh]

Ursula von der Leyen has confirmed that everyone in the EU will need to use the EU's app for identity authentication before being able to access or post on social media websites.

🇪🇺 As an expert in online child safety, I am here to expose the misinformation and misdirection in von der Leyen's statements.

Today von der Leyen said:

"This is not about whether children can access social media, it is about whether social media can access our children".

💡The first part is true. This isn't about children. It's about surveillance and combating political dissent. A state that can't control its own citizens is more dangerous than a state rife with criminals. The second part is a PR soundbite that politicians are using like a campaign slogan straight out of 1984.

🇪🇺"The question is no longer if children face risks online, but what can we do to give children a safer start online".

💡No. You can't give children a "safer start" online any more than you can offline. In the offline world, the government doesn't enforce curfews or ban children from entering liquor stores, bars or restaurants. That's a parent's responsibility. The digital world should be no different.

🇪🇺"The age verification app is one of the tools to get it done".

💡This is a contradiction because she also said "It won't be foolproof".

🇪🇺"It's easy to use, it is privacy preserving and it is open source".

💡The app was compromised as soon as it was released. "Privacy-preserving" age verification is an oxymoron. You can't verify a person's age without verifying their identity. Where or how that age is shared afterwards is irrelevant.

🇪🇺"This is basically about putting back the power into the hands of parents".

💡More from 1984. The EU is doing the opposite. Parents are having their authority stripped by politicians who think they know better. Many parents are capable and unaffected by peer pressure, and they know how to use parental controls to block any app classified as 13+. Some teens are safe, their parents trust them, and the state has no business overruling that trust.

🇪🇺"We don't give our children keys to the car before they have their licence"

💡Comparing an app to a car is a false equivalence used to justify mass surveillance. Governments don't decide when a young person is ready for car keys, guardians do.

💡Forcing every adult and child into a biometric checkpoint just to use an app or website is not licensing drivers. It's the state seizing everyone's keys, locking the garage, and forcing every driver to ask a private company for permission to take a drive.

💡 This is a gross, unethical overreach that strips authority from parents while imposing state sanctioned identity verification on every adult who doesn't even have a child.

💡Additionally, people who pass a test, obtain a licence and drive a car aren't forced to use an app to constantly authenticate their suitability to drive.

🇪🇺"We do not let them buy alcohol until they are legally allowed"

💡False equivalence. We don't force every person to show ID at a shopping mall entrance just because a few people might buy alcohol with a meal at a restaurant. Some parents are okay with their 12 year-old going to the mall with friends while others aren't. Either way, it's their choice. Whatever irresponsible decisions some parents might make, every adult in the country shouldn't be forced to pay the price.

🇪🇺"It won't be foolproof"

💡This is all the proof we need to show that the EU and every government know that banning social media for teens won't protect them. When pressed by journalists about VPNs being used to circumvent a ban, politicians always state the ban isn't a silver bullet and will take time. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan went as far as to say "we know it's not the solution".

💡Either age verification works, or it doesn't. As a technical expert in this space, I can tell you there are no additional steps to take and no progress to be made. Either the approach does what it is supposed to do, or it's not fit for purpose. If they claim a bulletproof solution is coming, it can only mean one thing. They intend to ban or restrict VPNs to people who verify their identity.

🇪🇺"It will take time to invite the cultural change that is already taking shape in our society, just as it took time to outlaw drink driving, just as it took time to use seatbelts in the cars. Great change never happens overnight, but when it comes to our safety it is always worth it".

💡Comparing a social media ban and age verification to seatbelts is a completely broken analogy. Seatbelts are a safety feature that protects children while allowing them to travel in a car. A ban doesn't give kids a seatbelt. It kicks them out of the car entirely.

💡Instead of supporting parents who want to guide their own children through the digital world, this heavy-handed law strips away parental authority by banning the apps and websites that many parents are perfectly fine with and actively monitor.

💡Furthermore, enforcing these bans requires biometric age verification, which means forcing millions of adult citizens to scan their IDs, faces or credit cards just to browse the internet. That isn't a common-sense traffic law.

💡It's a digital checkpoint on every street. True safety means teaching kids how to navigate the digital world safely with real guardrails and parental guidance, not burning down digital spaces for everyone under the guise of protection.

🇪🇺☠️ The EU wants to ban teens from social media so every person is forced to verify their identity before they can read, share or post anything online. In their words, this is to protect children from dangerous content.

🇪🇺☠️ The EU wants to enforce "Chat Control" so every app has to monitor everything people say privately inside it, including apps with end-to-end encryption. In their words, this is to protect children from dangerous criminals.

💡Where this ends

🇪🇺 "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever".

George Orwell, 1984.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇩🇪 German public broadcaster ARD is out there dropping anti-air conditioning propaganda in the middle of a record heatwave.

Their infographic basically says: "Sure it cools you down, but it heats up the planet."

Meanwhile Germans are melting and only 6% of homes even have AC.

Nothing says "we care about you" like lecturing people to sweat for the climate.

Climate warriors would rather you die of heatstroke than install an AC unit.

Source: ARD Quarks, Tagesschau / Writer: Sol

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Q: How are job postings for software engineers rising rapidly despite AI agents automating coding?

A: Because there’s far more code to manage than ever before. We’re already seeing a 14x YoY increase in GitHub commits, and it’s accelerating.

AI has dramatically lowered the cost of writing code, so it’s now being used across far more businesses, applications, and use cases.

We’re at the beginning of a massive productivity boom driven by the proliferation of bespoke software throughout the entire economy.

Coding has been AI’s breakout use case this year. The fact that it’s increased demand for software engineers — rather than decreased it — should call into question the entire “AI will cause mass job loss” narrative.

[Lukas Ziegler @lukas_m_ziegler]

Alpine Tech Corridor is the undisputed deeptech capital of continental Europe. 🏔️

The data from the European Deeptech Report 2026:

→ The Lausanne-Zürich-Munich axis is the #1 deeptech cluster in continental Europe
→ Switzerland + Munich invested close to €16bn into deeptech in the last 5 years
→ ETH Zürich, EPFL and TUM are ranked #1, #3 and #4 in deeptech spinout value creation in Europe
→ Together they produced 340 VC-backed spinouts — 45% of the total across all top 10 European universities → 12 out of 31 European deeptech unicorns came from these three institutions alone
→ The top 6 universities raised €23.1bn in VC — ETH, EPFL and TUM account for 47% of that. After Oxford, Bristol and Cambridge, the drop-off is massive.

Paris ranks high, but almost entirely because of Mistral.

It is the product of 150 years of precision engineering culture, world-class technical universities and a deep industrial base that gives deeptech companies real customers on their doorstep.

It looks like Europe has a deeptech supercluster! 🧪

~~

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[Lukas Ziegler @lukas_m_ziegler]

Ask anyone in robotics and they'll tell you, successful exits almost never happen.

@clearpathrobots is one of the very few stories that proved them wrong.

In 2009, four University of Waterloo engineering graduates started a robotics company.

One of them was Ryan Gariepy.

I had the chance of meeting Ryan in Denmark, and it was awesome! 🔥

Successful exits in robotics are RARE. IPOs, acquisitions at this scale, they almost never happen.

The hardware is hard, the sales cycles are long, the capital requirements are enormous. Most robotics companies don't make it.

In 2023, Rockwell Automation acquired Clearpath Robotics by Rockwell Automation and OTTO Motors for over $600 million, the largest Canadian robotics acquisition in history, beating multiple strategic buyers in a competitive process.

Ryan stayed. He is now VP of Robotics at Rockwell, running R&D, strategic technology planning and the company's new Robotics Center of Excellence.

Some of interesting facts about his company:

→ First company in the world to support ROS as part of its products, helping build the open-source foundation modern robotics runs on

→ 500+ organisations across 40 countries, MIT, Stanford, NASA, DARPA and the US Army Research Lab among them

→ Launched OTTO Motors in 2015, deploying the first commercial heavy-load AMR and the first productive fleet of over 100 units

→ Robots operating on every continent, including Antarctica

Fellow builders in the robotics space. This one is for you!

Robotics is a great market to be, and it's still about to EXPLODE. 🧨

If you are in your 20s, just start a robotics company ;-)

... and thank me later! 🦾

~~

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[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@IlirAliu_ @gs_ai_ Sooo good

[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

Love it. Zürich the robotics hub!

[Lukas Ziegler @lukas_m_ziegler]

JUST IN: microagi is opening its Global Robotics Research HQ on Bahnhofstrasse in Zürich, and choosing it over San Francisco.

Eight months ago @microagi was five people in a Munich hacker house. Today they operate in 15+ countries.

The reasoning behind Zürich is compelling:
→ Highest density of robotics talent in the world, ETH Zürich, EPFL, University of Zürich, IBM Research, Google, NVIDIA, Meta, Apple and Microsoft all run serious ML and robotics teams here

→ ABB, one of the most important industrial automation companies on earth, is headquartered in the city itself

→ Within a 6-hour radius: German automotive, Italian manufacturing, French aerospace, Benelux logistics and Swiss machine tools

But the line that stuck with me most:

"Europe was late to consumer internet. Europe was late to cloud. Europe was late to the foundation-model wave. But Europe is not late to robotics."

That is exactly right. The industrial base that physical AI sits on top of has been in Europe for 150 years. Precision mechanics. Machine-tool culture. Safety-critical engineering. Automation-grade manufacturing.

The next decade of AI value will be created where bits meet atoms. And Europe is finally in the right position at the right moment.

microagi gets it. And they're planting their flag right in the heart of it. 🇨🇭🇪🇺

@bercankilic, @YoanIlievX, @ZenoInMotion, @notgiannei LFG! 🔥

~~

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[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@farzyness @chamath @joerogan Ohhh can't wait for this one. The last one was great already!

[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@chris_j_paxton Well said. Its gou g to be a combination of labor, ideas and supervison...

[Lukas Ziegler @lukas_m_ziegler]

Is Zurich really the capital of robotics in Europe? 🇪🇺

Well, if you look at their robotics ecosystem, it seems true!

👀 SPOILER: Zurich robotics ecosystem is that BIG, that describing it I exceeded X post standard length (some companies will be described in the comment section).

Zurich is a great place to start a robotics company because everything you need is close and well connected.

It has top engineering talent, mainly from @ETH Zürich, one of the best robotics and AI universities in the world.

Not to mention great student initiatives like @ethroboticsclub.

Many successful robotics startups come directly from ETH research. Also, the presence of Disney Research and RAI Institute helps to be on the frontier of physical AI.

The city also has strong industry and customers nearby. Switzerland is home to global companies in robotics, manufacturing, and automation, such as ABB Robotics, which often work with startups as partners or early customers.

Zurich offers good access to funding, especially for deep-tech and robotics. Investors here are used to long development cycles and complex hardware products. 💰

Finally, Zurich is known for stability and quality of life. It is safe, well organized, and centrally located in Europe, making it easier to attract international talent and scale globally.

Listing some of the Zurich-based companies here:

→ @anybotics -  builds autonomous four-legged robots for industrial inspection and maintenance, and has raised $ 150M+ in funding.

→ @GravisRobotics - develops AI-powered autonomy systems that turn heavy construction machines into self-driving robots, and has raised ~$27M in total funding.

→ Verity - builds autonomous indoor drones for warehouse inventory tracking and has raised ~$60M+ in funding.

→ @mimicrobotics - develops AI-powered robotic picking systems that enable fast, reliable manipulation and handling for industrial operations.

→ @HexagonAB - builds industrial humanoid robots that combine AI, sensor fusion, and spatial intelligence to automate complex tasks.

→ @microagi - builds data infrastructure and AI systems that capture large-scale real-world human work to train robots and enable humanoids to learn complex physical tasks.

→ @duatic_ag - develops advanced human-scale robotic arms and mobile manipulation systems.

→ @rivr_tech - builds autonomous Physical AI-powered wheeled-legged robots for last-mile doorstep delivery (acquired by Amazon)

→ @FlexionRobotics - builds the autonomous AI “brain” and software stack for humanoid robots, and has raised about $50 M in funding.

→ @voliro69689 - builds autonomous aerial robots for industrial inspection and maintenance and has raised ~$23 M in Series A funding.

→ @loki_robotics - builds autonomous robots that clean complex real-world environments like commercial restrooms and shared spaces

I'm aware that there might be some companies missing!

~~

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[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@IlirAliu_ Well.said!

[Valon Asani @ValonAsaniDua]

You know you are healing when you want more children, not less, despite being aware of how much work it is to raise good and healthy children.

I have 3 boys, my brother has 2 boys, my sister 3 daughters. My friend @eduardluta has 2 boys, @MaxhuniMax one boy (more to come), @arditdua has a daughter (hopefully more soon :)). And all our close friends and brothers plan to have children.

Don't let them fool you, do the work, but also: have children.

[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@chris_j_paxton Indeed it is. Slowly playing catchup with the Chinese colleagues

[Lukas Ziegler @lukas_m_ziegler]

JUST IN: Figure has gone from producing 1 humanoid robot per day to 1 per hour, a 24x throughput improvement in under 120 days.

This data is from their manufacturing facility BotQ update (link below)

Here's what's happening inside BotQ:

→ Over 350 Figure 03 robots delivered and counting
→ End-of-line first-pass yield now above 80% and improving weekly
→ Battery line at 99.3% first-pass yield with 500+ battery packs shipped
→ Over 9,000 actuators produced across 10+ distinct SKUs
→ Every robot put through 80+ functional verification tests before sign-off

Their Helix AI model can now SEE the environment it's moving through, not just feel it. Stairs, ramps, uneven terrain, navigated zero-shot, trained entirely in simulation, deployed directly to hardware with no real-world fine-tuning.

@adcock_brett has been clear about the plan: every robot that rolls off the line is a data-collection engine.

The bigger the fleet, the faster the AI improves. The faster the AI improves, the more deployable the robot becomes.

This is the flywheel. And it is now spinning.

The humanoid robot race just got very serious. VERY INTERESTING.

Alright fam, what are your thoughts on @Figure_robot? 👀

Link: https://t.co/3vWfhxplYP

~~

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[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@lukas_m_ziegler Wow, that's just incredible. 1b seed. The numbwr get crazy these days...

[@jason @Jason]

I’ve invested in 700 private companies

Providing liquidity and loans to high performing founders is completely standard.

In fact, investors encourage loans and secondary sales for founders to enable them to go for the Gold — which is exactly what SpaceX has done.

The @NYTimesPR is presenting this as a controversy, when in fact it’s the private company playbook in 2026.

Another hit job from the NYT

[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@chris_j_paxton Agree with you. Governments nee to start ordering to increase demand and get actual deployment running, next to these few industry companies.

[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@lukas_m_ziegler 💯. Europe can push, and will in the upcoming years. But a lot of things are still in the way.

[Muhammad Ayan @socialwithaayan]

🚨 BREAKING: Someone just built the exact tool Andrej Karpathy said someone should build.

48 hours after Karpathy posted his LLM Knowledge Bases workflow, this showed up on GitHub.

It's called Graphify. One command. Any folder. Full knowledge graph.

Point it at any folder. Run /graphify inside Claude Code. Walk away.

Here is what comes out the other side:

-> A navigable knowledge graph of everything in that folder
-> An Obsidian vault with backlinked articles
-> A wiki that starts at index. md and maps every concept cluster
-> Plain English Q&A over your entire codebase or research folder

You can ask it things like:

"What calls this function?"
"What connects these two concepts?"
"What are the most important nodes in this project?"

No vector database. No setup. No config files.

The token efficiency number is what got me:

71.5x fewer tokens per query compared to reading raw files.

That is not a small improvement. That is a completely different paradigm for how AI agents reason over large codebases.

What it supports:

-> Code in 13 programming languages
-> PDFs
-> Images via Claude Vision
-> Markdown files

Install in one line:

pip install graphify && graphify install

Then type /graphify in Claude Code and point it at anything.

Karpathy asked. Someone delivered in 48 hours.

That is the pace of 2026.

Open Source. Free.

[Sacha Ghiglione @SachaGhi]

@jordan_ross_8F Openclaw