VaderResearch

first principles

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@immasiddx Yes

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@emily_yu Most likely not in SF. They are out there talking to potential customers in unsexy areas & exhibitions

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@_sam_sinha_ @BerntBornich @1x_tech Congrats Sam!

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@BerntBornich 👀

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

Economics of Humanoids Dancing 💃

You've likely seen robots dancing before

So how much does it cost to get them dance? 🧵

1 Unitree G1 costs $14k

Yet with a G1 you are limited to 3 dance sequences only

If you want to use your own dance sequences

You need to buy a G1 EDU (developer version)

1 Unitree G1 EDU3 costs $67k

There are 8 G1s in this video thus 8x$67 = $536k

This is the capex, lets look at wear & tear

G1s are fragile

There is a high chance the parts break during dancing

Every performance comes with rehearsals & testing

The more performance, the higher chance for breaking

Spare parts are as expensive as the main robot

Lets look at the additional costs

You need to hire dancers to record choreography

Have in-house devs to retarget that into the robot

Have technical crew at the stage ensuring all is well

Then logistics of moving the robots back and forth

1 G1 weighs 35kg, 8 G1s weigh 280kg

Once you add up the costs

And consider the risk of G1s breaking during dance

You realize that G1s are overkill for dancing

Yet ironically today the best G1 real life use case is

DANCING

Cause they are not fit for neither retail nor industrial

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

You’ll hear World Models more in the future

They’ll be big in robotics & gaming

@drfeifei is one of the top experts in WMs

She breaks down WMs in 3 functions

1. Renderer —> closer to video generation models (Sora, etc.) but doesn’t understand law of physics

2. Simulator —> closer to physics engines (Isaac Sim, Unreal) but only outputs state not pixels/images

3. Planner —> closer to VLA models, decides what action to do next

[Fei-Fei Li @drfeifei]

https://t.co/Kt50ttQRMJ

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

Startup raises $55m

For a tool that offers everything

That theoretically can be offered by Claude

But isn’t offered (I can attest to it)

Agents, workflows, automations, assistants

All providing the same solution

Building the tool for this is commoditized

Thanks to AI

Which is why the market is crowded

But the real edge is DISTRIBUTION

And $55m funding does help with that

[Jean-Denis Greze 💡 @jgreze]

Today, we’re launching @TownAI: the AI assistant that learns you.

We’re coming out of beta with a $55M Series A led by @ARampell at @a16z, with participation from @KirstenGreen at @forerunnervc and continued support from @firstround, @altcap, and @conviction.

Right now, getting real value from AI means prompting, configuring, building workflows, managing agents.

We think that’s backwards.

The future of AI is a companion that already knows you and how you work. Town connects across your inbox, calendar, Slack, docs, messages, and workflows to understand what you need, then starts doing the work with you.

Drafting. Scheduling. Project tracking. Follow-ups. Context gathering. Multi-step tasks. And it only acts when you say so.

All adapting to your voice, priorities, routines, and relationships over time.

Your Townie is the AI assistant you actually need.

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

Good announcement video

Clean, personal storytelling

There’ll be many more similar startups

Providing AI workflow automation to SMEs

[steijnpelle @steijnpelle]

Today, we're introducing Lassie and $47M in funding led by a16z.

We're building AI that runs small businesses, starting with doctors' offices.

Lassie is already trusted by 700+ practices across the country, working autonomously to provide them with 30 hours of labor per month.

To get here, we first had to leave Robinhood and Superhuman to work in offices ourselves.

Here's how that went.

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

TLDR on @rewkang’s podcast w/ @APompliano

FIGURE🦿
Andrew came across @Figure_robot deal in 2023

Had no experience investing in Robotics

So asked VC friends for advice

Most were skeptical and told him to pass

VC robotics bets hadn’t produced many winners

US🇺🇸 VS CHINA🇨🇳
Andrew evaluates robotics firms in 3 categories:
1. Manufacturing
2. Hardware design
3. AI capabilities

China is the clear winner in manufacturing

China is leading in hardware design too

US only has Figure/Tesla

China has 100s of diff specialized hardware designs

US has an edge over AI capabilities

AI capabilities are critical cause without brains

Robots are useless

Andrew thinks tech produced ≠ market cap

BYD sells more cars than Tesla

But BYD mcap is 10th of Tesla

US robotics companies offer higher mcap potential

HUMANOIDS VS SPECIALIZED ROBOTS 🤖
Andrew agrees specialized robots are more effective

And their adoption will be earlier than humanoids

Argues that humanoids can be mass produced cheaper

The world is not static so flexibility will be valuable

ROBOTICS TRAINING DATA 🕶️
World models have changed the game

They are trained on internet video data

Despite not as good as teleops/egocentric/sim

They are still very valuable

And there are loads of them online for free

There is still need for egocentric data of specific tasks

But the scale of data needed to be collected is

Lower than expected compared to 9 months ago

JOB DISPLACEMENT 👨‍🔧

Andrew thinks job displacement is real

Cognitive jobs will be displaced by digital AI

Physical jobs will be displaced by physical AI

UBI is not optional but necessary

ROBOSTRATEGY $BOT

OpenAI and Anthropic went nuts in a few years

If you had invested in top AI companies few years ago

You would have outperformed the best seed funds

Same vertical takeoff will happen for robotics

Robostrategy is a publicly trading closed ended VC fund

It is currently trading at a premium to NAV

NAV premium allows them to raise more capital

Via issuing more shares accretively to shareholders

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

Not enough people are talking about physical AI and robotics.

I sat down with @rewkang, one of the best investors of the last decade, to discuss his massive bet on humanoids and robotics.

He breaks down the industry, the addressable market, multiple leading companies, and why he launched a publicly-traded fund ($BOT) focused on investing in the top private robotics companies.

YouTube: https://t.co/aBFxTzP2Kg
Apple: https://t.co/9KnbfWL6Wv
Spotify: https://t.co/ZVRprV7bdT

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
1:28 - Why Andrew shifted from crypto to humanoid robots
3:58 - How big is the total addressable market?
8:08 - Building conviction — the $19M bet on Figure AI
16:06 - US vs. China — who wins the robot race?
28:08 - General purpose vs. specialized robots
31:05 - Where does training data come from?
40:24 - Humanoid robots in your everyday life
43:27 - Can Tesla & Elon win the humanoid race?
46:19 - Job displacement & UBI
51:15 - RoboStrategy — the publicly traded venture fund
1:11:17 - What is exciting about Apptronik?
1:13:24 - Addressing the critics

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

.@Rewkang compares humanoids costs to human labor

"A humanoid will cost $2 per hour

A human costs $35 per hour in the US

Humanoids can do everything humans can do

They don’t need to rest and they don’t quit

A humanoid will replace 3 humans

Even in low-cost labor countries

Humanoids will become a cheaper option"

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

.@Rewkang explains humanoid TAM to @APompliano

"If you sell 100k robots for $50k each

$5bn revenue

You’re already a $100bn+ company

If you sell 1m robots

$50bn revenue

1m robots is nothing

Amazon, Walmart, etc. have millions of workers

There is a clear path to achieve trillions in revenue

And for tremendous value creation

Similar to what Apple achieved after launching iPhone"

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@ysl_serena Cause barrier to entry is way lower (financially & expertise-wise)

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@joshavata @MeckaAI Huge! Congrats!

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@lmrankhan Tiktok and Reels too

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

OpenAI Robotics 🤖

[Sam Altman @sama]

OpenAI Robotics is hiring, looking for exceptional full-stack hardware, ops, systems, and ML engineers to help us program and manufacture robots that are useful for society.

AI should be able to help people in the physical world. In the short term, we are focused on robots to support skilled workers to build our future infrastructure; in the long term, we imagine everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need.

Our world simulation research program, led by Aditya Ramesh (@model_mechanic), has evolved over the past year into OpenAI Robotics. Progress is rapid, and based on a foundation of co-design between robotics hardware and ML research.

If you love working hands-on across the robotics stack and want to build the future, please consider joining us. Send an email with your background and evidence of exceptional accomplishment to: [email protected]

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@mal_shaik true

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

well executed demo video

[Farza 🇵🇰🇺🇸 @FarzaTV]

Watch me control my computer with just my voice. This is the future of operating systems.

No hands.

GPT-Realtime 2.0 is very, very underrated.

Demo:

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

This is indeed a large opportunity

The manufacturing industry still deals with deaths

Especially ones that have highly chemical/toxic liquid or gas within their processes such as oil refineries, petrochecmicals, etc.

Which is why blue collar labor gets paid much higher in these factories vs non-chemical manufacturing

Tasks leading to death are still not automated cause the factories are old and the tasks can't be automated by static industrial robots

Which is why more and more factories are deploying a mix of drones, robodogs and will soon deploy humanoids

The bigger opportunity is in deployment & learning the actual pain points of these factories which is crucial for pmf

[Meltem Demirors @Melt_Dem]

1/ QUESTION: what is a century-old industry that out-precisions human laborers by 5x and has reduced manufacturing injuries by >60%?

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS

today, industrial robotics is a tiny market. we explore why this gap exists, and why it is finally closing.

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

NVIDIA subsidizing costs to run data center at homes

Up to $150 electricity & internet cost per month

Decentralized distributed compute at its finest

[winkle. @w1nklerr]

Nvidia will now pay you to put a mini AI data center on your house

It looks like a normal AC unit in the yard.

But inside sits 16 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs and Dell servers.

A startup called Span builds them, backed by Nvidia.

They bolt onto your home and you get paid for the power and Wi-Fi.

Some estimates put that around $1,000 a month in your pocket.

That is rent money just for hosting a box outside.

Span says it deploys way faster and cheaper than a real data center.

The AI boom is literally moving into the suburbs.

Save this, the grid is getting rebuilt in real time.

[VaderResearch @VaderResearch]

@sotamiyajima Looking great!