Articles & analyses

Writing

Neural network visualization for embodied AI

September 7, 20267 min read

Robot Brains as SaaS: The Foundation Model Land Grab

Seven months ago, Skild AI had no revenue. Today it's valued at $14 billion. The money isn't chasing robots — it's chasing the software layer that tells robots what to do.

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GPU server infrastructure powering robotics simulation

Technology

The Robot Isn't the Hard Part

Robotics funding hit $18.8 billion in 2026 before summer ended — but the most consequential money isn't going to the robots themselves. It's going to the unglamorous infrastructure underneath them.

August 17, 20267 min read

Humanoid robot in a modern commercial environment

Technology

The 200-Hour Test: What Consumer Robotics Actually Proved in 2026

Robotics startups have raised more capital in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2025 — but the number that actually matters isn't the fundraising total. It's 4.05 seconds.

August 10, 20267 min read

Self-driving vehicle navigating city streets

Technology

Uber Is Becoming the Operating System for Autonomous Vehicles — And Nobody Planned It That Way

Waymo spent $16 billion proving driverless works. Waabi, Wayve, and Nuro spent their rounds proving it scales. The company quietly capturing the most structural value from all of it is Uber.

August 3, 20267 min read

Industrial robot arm in an automated manufacturing facility

Technology

The Data Flywheel Is Real. The Deployment Gap Is Realer.

Over $2 billion flowed into industrial robotics in the first half of 2026 alone — yet 90% of U.S. factories still run without a single robot. The capital is not the constraint.

June 8, 20267 min read

Technology

The Pentagon Is Buying a New Defense Stack

Three software-native defense startups are now valued higher than most traditional prime subsidiaries — and they're winning contracts the primes weren't positioned to compete for.

June 1, 20267 min read

Abstract AI neural network visualization representing foundation models

Technology

Why Foundation Models for Robots Are Different

The lessons from large language models don't transfer cleanly to embodied systems. Action spaces, physical grounding, and the sim-to-real gap make robot foundation models a fundamentally harder problem — and a more interesting one.

May 27, 202611 min read

FPGA chip and programmable logic hardware components

Technology

From FPGAs to Neural Engines: Computing at the Edge of the Physical World

How edge inference hardware is being redesigned from the ground up for the latency-sensitive, power-constrained demands of robotics and industrial control — and why the programming model matters as much as the chip.

May 19, 20269 min read

High-performance computing system for real-time deterministic control

Technology

Real-Time OS Wars: The Battle for the Robotics Middleware Stack

ROS 2, VxWorks, Apex.OS — why the choice of RTOS and middleware defines a robot's capabilities more than most people realize, and who's winning the infrastructure layer.

May 13, 20268 min read

Technology

Actuators Are the Unsexy Bottleneck Nobody Talks About

Force control, backdrivability, and thermal limits are quietly the hardest problems in robotics. A deep dive into actuator technology — and who's actually solving it.

May 6, 20269 min read

Abstract technology network visualization from above

Venture Capital

The Physical AI Stack: Understanding the Full Opportunity

Physical AI is not just robotics with better software. It's a complete reimagining of how machines interact with the physical world — from perception and manipulation to long-horizon reasoning. Here's how I map the opportunity across the stack.

April 29, 202612 min read

Fiber optic cables representing sensor and vision systems

Technology

Perception Is Still Hard: The Computer Vision Bottleneck in Industrial Automation

After a decade of deep learning breakthroughs, robotic vision in unstructured environments still fails in predictable ways. Here's what's actually working — and what isn't.

April 22, 202610 min read

Digital code matrix representing embedded firmware systems

Industry

The Firmware Problem: Why Great Hardware Ships With Terrible Software

Industrial hardware companies are drowning in embedded systems debt. The software running most factory robots is invisible, unglamorous, and spectacularly bad by modern standards. It's also one of the best investment opportunities in the physical economy.

April 15, 20268 min read

White humanoid robot against a clean background

Industry

Why Humanoids Won't Win in the Factory (Yet)

The drop-in robot pitch is irresistible. A machine that looks like a person can work anywhere a person can. The economics of that pitch, in most factories today, are mostly wrong.

April 7, 202610 min read

Technology

The Chip Beneath the Machine: Why Custom Silicon Is the Real Moat in Physical AI

NVIDIA dominates AI training. But edge inference for robots — low-latency, low-power, industrial-grade — is a different problem entirely. A new wave of custom silicon companies is racing to own it.

March 31, 20269 min read

GPU server rack for large-scale simulation rendering

Technology

Synthetic Data Is Eating Industrial Robotics

The biggest bottleneck to deploying more industrial robots isn't the robot — it's the training data. Synthetic data from simulation is solving the cold-start problem, but the sim-to-real gap is still real.

March 23, 202611 min read