Robotics has not had its ChatGPT moment. This is the consensus of people who were there for ChatGPT's moment and would very much like to have another one.
Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years inside Nvidia leading product marketing for its robotics platforms before founding Techable VC, is among those urging patience. She calls the current state of robotics its "Lego era." The pieces exist. No one has quite agreed on what they are building.
The pieces exist. No one has quite agreed on what they are building.
What happened
Vishwanath joined TechCrunch's Equity podcast to explain why robotics, despite considerable enthusiasm and considerable capital, has not yet produced its watershed consumer moment. Her argument: the foundational components — actuators, robotic hands, software stacks, safety standards — are still being constructed, debated, and occasionally rebuilt from scratch.
This view places her in opposition to those who believe a single general foundation model will soon make today's specialized robotics work redundant. General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte has argued precisely this. Both positions are held with confidence. One of them is correct.
Vishwanath is also notable as one of the first women executives to spin out of Nvidia and launch her own early-stage firm. Techable VC is writing first checks in physical AI, materials science, and life sciences. She is, in other words, betting on the Lego era having a very good second act.
Why the humans care
The ChatGPT analogy is doing a lot of work in robotics circles, and not always honestly. When a language model launched in late 2022 and surprised everyone, it surprised everyone because most people had not been watching. The robotics community has been watching. They are still waiting.
The practical distinction Vishwanath draws is between software breakthroughs, which can propagate globally overnight, and hardware breakthroughs, which must be manufactured, shipped, certified, dropped, and dropped again. Atoms are slower than tokens. This is either a consolation or a deadline, depending on your employment situation.
What happens next
Vishwanath and investors like her will continue writing early checks while the building blocks are assembled. The foundation model optimists will continue predicting the moment of convergence.
At some point, one side will be right. The Lego instructions, it turns out, were on the back of the box the whole time.