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The hardest problems in AI aren't research problems anymore. They're deployment problems. It’s how we actually deliver real value, today, to build the future people want. That’s why, after 20 years in AI, my next step was inevitable: make robots do useful work for and alongside people, right now.... Today, I am delighted to announce the launch of Walden Robotics to tackle just that. We started this year and are coming out of stealth today with a $300M seed round backed by some of the most serious companies and investors in the world. They have seen firsthand our general-purpose robots being useful in production on day one, and getting better every day after. You can see a glimpse of what we've been building in the video below. Physical AI has gone through a rapid phase transition, in part thanks to pioneering research from my friends and co-founders Russ Tedrake , Ben Burchfiel , Siyuan Feng, Rareș Ambruș , and many others at Walden. But from our long experience working together with co-founders Kerri Fetzer-Borelli and Dave Johnson, we learned how hard it is to deploy cutting-edge AI in a real, live, incredibly sophisticated production environment with an intricate ballet of automation and human ingenuity. That’s why we deliberately created Walden Robotics as a full-stack, human-centric, customer-focused robotics company from the start: we seeded the company with a world-class team across hardware, software, AI, deployment, operations, product, and business talent, so we could continuously optimize our whole system end-to-end, deeply and purposefully, from real-world experience with real customers. The efficacy of this strategy speaks for itself: since February, our general-purpose robots have been doing useful work in production at a Toyota plant in North America, moving from first pilot to real work in under two months. Not a lab. Not a demo. Not a future promise. Real work on a real line, today, at one of the best large-scale manufacturers in the world, with general-purpose robots that get better every day. And this is just the beginning. Two ways to find us: If you run a manufacturing or logistics business and want robots that are widely useful now, not someday, let's talk. We own “ for a reason! And if you want to build them: we're hiring across the company, from software, to hardware, AI, ops, product, business, and more. In particular, as the Chief Strategy Officer at Walden, I am recruiting for three incredibly impactful founding roles to fuel our agent-native go-to-market engine. Check out Let’s build together!show more

Adrien Gaidon

4,995 subscribers

64,603 views • 3 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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24 Comments

David Vivancos - e/acc3 months ago

Congrats @adnothing and team eager to see what you build!

Marwa ElDiwiny3 months ago

Congrats!

Sedrick Keh3 months ago

Congrats Adrien!

Craig Merry3 months ago

🥳

Senthilnathan K3 months ago

This is massive! Russ’s lessons in robotics has had the most foundational impact personally, great to see this team up.

Shara3 months ago

Deployment being the harder problem than research is an honest framing.

John Dagdelen3 months ago

Congrats on the announcement! Excited to see what you guys are doing go public!

BuyThisDomains.com | Domain Escrow Services3 months ago

Congrats

Alessandra Massa3 months ago

Congrats Adrien!! The website and video turned out so well!

AI Mastery Guide3 months ago

Real robots doing real work on a Toyota line since February is a strong proof point over the usual demo reveals.

Ilman Shazhaev3 months ago

Getting robots into a factory in under two months is a fast pace. Seeing them do actual work on a production line beats any demo I've seen lately. Congrats Adrien.

Gokberk Cinbis3 months ago

Congratulations!!

cnc masch buddy3 months ago

Congrats! Do you guys need gears or reducers? Would be glad to help

Jonathan Fontanez3 months ago

Agreed, I think the software side is especially underserved. It’s hard to go from research to practical deployment. There’s a missing layer of a well rounded stack and usable developer experience.

Tal Cohen | Physical AI3 months ago

This captures the real transition. For a long time the central question was whether intelligence could become capable enough. Now the harder question is what happens when that intelligence begins to act in environments where its decisions leave irreversible traces. Capability is advancing. The deeper work is learning how to live with intelligence that carries consequence.

Jason傑森 🇭🇰 | 🛠️3 months ago

真敢拿钱往真人摔

EB1A Experts3 months ago

Real-world deployment is the ultimate benchmark. Congrats on the launch.

Branding Waves3 months ago

The move from demos to daily operations is the real milestone.

Hoy 🤙3 months ago

Robots running a real Toyota line!

Jack3 months ago

Congrats! Do you guys need gears or reducers? Would be glad to help😃

Manish | Skygnosis3 months ago

this matches what breaks in practice. the models are good enough; the failure is almost always the error path — a tool call times out, nothing retries, nothing hard-fails, and the agent confidently reports success on a task it never finished. that's not research, it's plumbing.

Sharoon Irfan3 months ago

This is the conversation nobody in AI research wants to have. We built a model that hit 94% on benchmarks and then couldn't handle a real warehouse environment because the sim-to-real gap is still massive. What deployment environments are you targeting first?

Erika Reed2 months ago

The full-stack approach makes a lot of sense. Real deployment depends on much more than just having a capable model.

Akeil Smith3 months ago

deployment was always the hard part. research just had better pr because a demo is easy and a rollout is not

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Bercan

51,311 views • 1 month ago

Here we go again 🚀! Excited to announce that we're building A1Zap (YC W25) with Pennie Li and that we're in the Y Combinator W25 batch in San Francisco! What is A1Base? A1Base gives AI Agents a real world identity for work. We do that by rebuilding Twilio and Okta from the ground up, putting AI Agents first. This means developers can make AI-first agentic applications 10x easier with our API's. ⁉️ Why are we doing this? Because there's a huge torrent of new valuable companies possible with AI agents, but to get their AI Agents to users, they have to chain custom apps, chat interfaces, awkward Slack integrations, browser bots, and wrestle with Twilio’s legacy API (which is built for marketing). We solve this by providing developers with an easy to use API to interface your AI agent with humans/coworkers/users where they are in this case in Whatsapp, Slack, Teams, SMS and more) - with AI Agent features built in. These digital workers are poised to transform how we work and we're the critical infrastructure to help them interact naturally in human workflows. We're not just building another AI tool. We're creating the infrastructure that will enable AI agents to become a natural part of the workforce - handling everything from customer support to sales development to creative work. We're backed by Y Combinator and working with founding teams who share our vision. We believe that in the near future, AI Agents with human coworkers will enable us to pursue more creative and impactful work. Our mission is to help developers build AI Agents that people can partner with and rely on as trusted allies—always with a human-first mindset. If you're thinking about the Agentic future of your company reach out! If you're looking to build your first AI Agentic company - reach out too - we have some amazing open source templates to get you started on the journey. Excited to share more of what we're up to soon 🔜.

Here we go again 🚀! Excited to announce that we're building A1Zap (YC W25) with Pennie Li and that we're in the Y Combinator W25 batch in San Francisco! What is A1Base? A1Base gives AI Agents a real world identity for work. We do that by rebuilding Twilio and Okta from the ground up, putting AI Agents first. This means developers can make AI-first agentic applications 10x easier with our API's. ⁉️ Why are we doing this? Because there's a huge torrent of new valuable companies possible with AI agents, but to get their AI Agents to users, they have to chain custom apps, chat interfaces, awkward Slack integrations, browser bots, and wrestle with Twilio’s legacy API (which is built for marketing). We solve this by providing developers with an easy to use API to interface your AI agent with humans/coworkers/users where they are in this case in Whatsapp, Slack, Teams, SMS and more) - with AI Agent features built in. These digital workers are poised to transform how we work and we're the critical infrastructure to help them interact naturally in human workflows. We're not just building another AI tool. We're creating the infrastructure that will enable AI agents to become a natural part of the workforce - handling everything from customer support to sales development to creative work. We're backed by Y Combinator and working with founding teams who share our vision. We believe that in the near future, AI Agents with human coworkers will enable us to pursue more creative and impactful work. Our mission is to help developers build AI Agents that people can partner with and rely on as trusted allies—always with a human-first mindset. If you're thinking about the Agentic future of your company reach out! If you're looking to build your first AI Agentic company - reach out too - we have some amazing open source templates to get you started on the journey. Excited to share more of what we're up to soon 🔜.

Pasha Rayan

54,029 views • 1 year ago

Today, we’re thrilled to announce our $200M Series C funding round at a $1B valuation, led by RoboStrategy and existing investors including General Catalyst. Standard Bots is now America’s largest manufacturer of AI-native industrial robots. Our customers include Sunoco, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the US Army along with hundreds of other manufacturers across the country. We’re proud to say that we’re on track to deploy 10% of all U.S. industrial robots by next year. We are expanding our Glen Cove, New York facility to 70,000 square feet to scale our vertically integrated production process. We currently design almost all our own parts, including our own actuators, and we assemble every final product in-house. By 2027, we’ll manufacture everything — from metal in to robots out — right here in America. We believe AI-native robots are the essential power tool of the 21st century — the tool that will grow American manufacturing and help every American worker to be a force at work. You just show your robot how it’s done, and it learns through demonstration. No coding, no consultants, just unbox and deploy faster than anything else on the market. Right now it’s possible for the United States to revitalize our manufacturing base if we become the worldwide leader in this transformative technology. We must build American robots, and put them to work in American factories. It’s a national imperative, and it’s our central mission. This fundraise gets us one step closer to the goal. The future of American manufacturing is bright! Join Standard Bots, and show your robot how it’s done — we’re just getting started.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce our $200M Series C funding round at a $1B valuation, led by RoboStrategy and existing investors including General Catalyst. Standard Bots is now America’s largest manufacturer of AI-native industrial robots. Our customers include Sunoco, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the US Army along with hundreds of other manufacturers across the country. We’re proud to say that we’re on track to deploy 10% of all U.S. industrial robots by next year. We are expanding our Glen Cove, New York facility to 70,000 square feet to scale our vertically integrated production process. We currently design almost all our own parts, including our own actuators, and we assemble every final product in-house. By 2027, we’ll manufacture everything — from metal in to robots out — right here in America. We believe AI-native robots are the essential power tool of the 21st century — the tool that will grow American manufacturing and help every American worker to be a force at work. You just show your robot how it’s done, and it learns through demonstration. No coding, no consultants, just unbox and deploy faster than anything else on the market. Right now it’s possible for the United States to revitalize our manufacturing base if we become the worldwide leader in this transformative technology. We must build American robots, and put them to work in American factories. It’s a national imperative, and it’s our central mission. This fundraise gets us one step closer to the goal. The future of American manufacturing is bright! Join Standard Bots, and show your robot how it’s done — we’re just getting started.

Standard Bots

438,933 views • 4 months ago

Announcing Axol: a dual-arm robot designed for teams working with physical AI. Made in America. Axol is for builders who believe robots should work, in the real world, not just staged environments, and that the future of physical AI should be open, not closed. #robotics #automation #ai #hardware

Announcing Axol: a dual-arm robot designed for teams working with physical AI. Made in America. Axol is for builders who believe robots should work, in the real world, not just staged environments, and that the future of physical AI should be open, not closed. #robotics #automation #ai #hardware

Almond Robotics

64,774 views • 4 months ago

One of the biggest surprises in AI over the last few years has been how well coding agents generalize beyond software. In a recent essay, MIT professor Philip Isola argued that we may be entering the era of robot-use agents: general-purpose models that can control different robots, write policies, and learn new physical tasks with little or no robot-specific training. In this episode of Decoded, we're joined by the founders of Waddle Labs and Robocurve PBC, two of the startups whose work helped drive this realization. They're working at the frontier of using general-purpose models to control robots, and their recent demos helped inspire the growing conversation around robot-use agents. Together, we dig into the research behind that idea, from code-as-policies and vision-language-action models to the harnesses and evals needed to make these systems work in the real world. 00:00 — What Are Robot-Use Agents? 02:11 — From Vision-Language-Action Models to General LLMs 04:07 — The Bitter Lesson for Robotics 07:04 — How Coding Agents Learned to Control Robots 10:41 — How Robots Learn From Experience 14:22 — The Harness as a Form of Robot Intelligence 16:14 — Watching Astra Control a Robot 20:55 — Why General Models May Win in Robotics 26:05 — How Close Are General-Purpose Robots?

One of the biggest surprises in AI over the last few years has been how well coding agents generalize beyond software. In a recent essay, MIT professor Philip Isola argued that we may be entering the era of robot-use agents: general-purpose models that can control different robots, write policies, and learn new physical tasks with little or no robot-specific training. In this episode of Decoded, we're joined by the founders of Waddle Labs and Robocurve PBC, two of the startups whose work helped drive this realization. They're working at the frontier of using general-purpose models to control robots, and their recent demos helped inspire the growing conversation around robot-use agents. Together, we dig into the research behind that idea, from code-as-policies and vision-language-action models to the harnesses and evals needed to make these systems work in the real world. 00:00 — What Are Robot-Use Agents? 02:11 — From Vision-Language-Action Models to General LLMs 04:07 — The Bitter Lesson for Robotics 07:04 — How Coding Agents Learned to Control Robots 10:41 — How Robots Learn From Experience 14:22 — The Harness as a Form of Robot Intelligence 16:14 — Watching Astra Control a Robot 20:55 — Why General Models May Win in Robotics 26:05 — How Close Are General-Purpose Robots?

Y Combinator

94,714 views • 1 month ago

We're winning the AI browser wars, and we're not even trying. Our mission isn't to build a browser. We're an agent company, not a browser company. We've seen firsthand how teams struggle to get started with AI. The tools they tried are too complex and lack the context you need. We decided to build a browser since it's already the tool you work in. We all know how to use a browser. You can pick up Strawberry and start using AI agents from day one. By building a browser we are also positioning ourselves to build towards the internet of the future. An internet where trillions of agents will be communicating with each other. This is the biggest opportunity of our lifetime. But someone has to make sure it is safe, effective and accessible to teams across the world. That is our mission.

We're winning the AI browser wars, and we're not even trying. Our mission isn't to build a browser. We're an agent company, not a browser company. We've seen firsthand how teams struggle to get started with AI. The tools they tried are too complex and lack the context you need. We decided to build a browser since it's already the tool you work in. We all know how to use a browser. You can pick up Strawberry and start using AI agents from day one. By building a browser we are also positioning ourselves to build towards the internet of the future. An internet where trillions of agents will be communicating with each other. This is the biggest opportunity of our lifetime. But someone has to make sure it is safe, effective and accessible to teams across the world. That is our mission.

Charles Maddock

42,381 views • 4 months ago

Today, we're announcing our Series B: $200M at a $3.1B valuation, and the release of Arena's Alignment Index. AI is advancing faster than our ability to evaluate it. The world needs a neutral third party to measure how safe and aligned AI actually is once it's in the hands of real people. That's the role Arena is stepping into today. The Alignment Index is built from real-world agent traces, starting with three signals: Unauthorized Action, False Attribution, and Deceptive Completion, with results for over 20 frontier models launching today. Hear more from our CEO Anastasios Nikolas Angelopoulos below, and read the full breakdown, and more details about our company growth in thread. This funding will allow us to go further on safety signals, agentic capabilities, and modalities. It will also allow us to grow the company to match the scale of our mission. Today, we’re still a nimble team of 90, and we're looking for people to join us across research, product, engineering, and more. Come build with us. As AI gets more capable and autonomous, understanding how well it can safely and effectively work for people only matters more. That's what Arena is built to measure and advance. Thank you to our community, our investors, and everyone building with us! Take a look at our open roles if you want to join us (link in bio).

Today, we're announcing our Series B: $200M at a $3.1B valuation, and the release of Arena's Alignment Index. AI is advancing faster than our ability to evaluate it. The world needs a neutral third party to measure how safe and aligned AI actually is once it's in the hands of real people. That's the role Arena is stepping into today. The Alignment Index is built from real-world agent traces, starting with three signals: Unauthorized Action, False Attribution, and Deceptive Completion, with results for over 20 frontier models launching today. Hear more from our CEO Anastasios Nikolas Angelopoulos below, and read the full breakdown, and more details about our company growth in thread. This funding will allow us to go further on safety signals, agentic capabilities, and modalities. It will also allow us to grow the company to match the scale of our mission. Today, we’re still a nimble team of 90, and we're looking for people to join us across research, product, engineering, and more. Come build with us. As AI gets more capable and autonomous, understanding how well it can safely and effectively work for people only matters more. That's what Arena is built to measure and advance. Thank you to our community, our investors, and everyone building with us! Take a look at our open roles if you want to join us (link in bio).

Arena.ai

116,004 views • 19 days ago