00:27:04 · Sean O’Kane
[00:27:04] S3: Yeah. It's like a a cliche at this point that we go to CES every year, and and John Deere is talking about... Or Caterpillar is talking about, you know, new ways to automate their heavy machinery and and so to see startups continue to come into this space. I mean, we've heard for so long. Right? Like, that autonomy was going to become a thing that was more applicable in these kinds of off road fields, like you're not having to worry about other traffic, like certainly there's safety concerns, but there are reasons why it can work here in a way that it can't elsewhere. And I think that's really interesting. Also, is just one of those companies, like you mentioned, they're only two years old. I remember when we first came across them, and we were trying to run down the story about what is this company operating in stealth. Like, we know Boris Sofman. He's a known quantity in this space. What is he up to for a guy who worked on big vehicles like Waymo and worked on small vehicles like little toy cars with... At at Anki. And it's just... It's really interesting to see them move so fast. And I think it's a testament to the the focus that I think that has cohered in Silicon Valley on the VC side. We had Aidan, Madigan, Curtis from Eclipse on stage at Disrupt just a few weeks ago. She's one of the people who led that investment into Bedrock or one of the earlier investments into Bedrock, and she is just super convicted. It was really interesting to hear her talk about sort of deploying AI like this on the edge in an area where you can't really constantly update it or tweak it and and the challenges that brings. But it just shows that, like, some of these VCs are so bought into these ideas now that they're willing to throw this much money at a company that seems to be gaining real traction.
00:28:38 · Kirsten Korosec
[00:28:38] S1: Yeah. And I will say also that we've seen attempts to apply, you know, machine learning AI to robotics in the form of agriculture that hasn't totally borne out. I mean, we... We've seen some pretty interesting acquisitions. We've also seen the downside of... You know, Sean, you've done some reporting on this on companies that made some big promises around autonomy and and tractors and things like that, applying it to farming, and and it really did not go well. Construction feels like the next hot area, and we are seeing, like, quite a bit of competition in this space. Bedrock Robotics is definitely not the only one. But the thing about, you know, construction and also, like, large industrial sectors, there's so many slices. So you can do mining within this. You can, you know, be operating in the Permian Basin, you know, self driving trucks that are off road in closed environments. And so there's, I think, a lot of opportunity for startups. They don't have to, you know, boil the ocean here. They can really focus on this very, like, very specific slices and... Of this very massive sort of industrial sector. It's a big opportunity, I think, for startups that are trying to, you know, make their way into physical AI.
00:30:00 · Anthony Ha
[00:30:00] S0: Yeah. And I think one of the other interesting points that that came up in the story as well was the fact that when we talk about automation, you know, there are areas where there's very real fears about sort of what does this mean for human jobs. But construction is an area where, at least as I understand it, in The United States, that actually sort of just interest the amount of people going into these fields is is going down. And so, in theory, I mean, there's a lot of questions here, but you can imagine that this is an area where that transition can maybe be a little bit more graceful and not involve mass unemployment. But we have one more deal to talk about, and this is an even bigger investment, more than $2,000,000,000 in a startup called Rebuild, a company that I had not heard much about before reading this story. Sean, what's Rebuild?
00:30:46 · Sean O’Kane
[00:30:46] S3: Yeah. This is a company that is based in Massachusetts and and kind of keeps it low profile. They are... You could call them, like, sort of a domestic manufacturing accelerator incubator, a little bit of both. It was started by Jeff Wilke, who was the former commercial CEO at Amazon, and his sort of college buddy, Miles Arnold. And they are... They've been in operation since 2020. The idea... The pitch was basically they saw in 2020 how supply chains were getting disrupted and how we were kind of left in the lurch, not being able to access stuff from China. And so they were early on this idea of reindustrialization. And their approach is basically, like, you know, like incubate some startups and spin them out when necessary, attract technologies, let them foster here, or foster them here in The US. And, you know, I think the biggest, most, visible thing that they've done to date was this is where Slate Auto, which is the Bezos backed EV startup that we've written so much about and first revealed, you know, a little over a year and a half ago, was, you know, started. It got started here by by Jeff and Miles, and then they brought in their first CEO, and then they spun that out in order to to bring more capital into that effort. But a lot of the other things they're doing are are really kind of, like, wonky, deep in the weeds, industrial automation, and drone assembly, and things like that. And so, you know, this is a lot of money for a company not a lot of people know. $2,100,000,000. It was led by General Catalyst, which is also an investor in Slate, and the strategic investment group from JPMorgan Chase. And so, you know, this is one of a number of right now that I think are doing really interesting things. I think when you think about, like, bring back US manufacturing, we think about big boxes in different places and and filling them with robots or... And workers. But it's also about, like, fostering these technologies that contribute to that... To making that easier and also, you know, the other problem that we have, which is there are a lot of manufacturers in this country who are capable of doing really incredible things. And so it's about finding those manufacturers, matching them up with customers, enabling them with new technologies. And I think all of that stuff is why they were able to raise so much money here.
00:32:53 · Kirsten Korosec
[00:32:53] S1: Well, I do have one quick question before we wrap up the show... This episode. Obviously, there's a lot of Amazon connections here. So, you know, there's the Jeff Bezos back spin out, Slate Auto, which you mentioned, and then, of course, Jeff Wilke. What is your sense, or is there any evidence that shows that this company specifically working on this sort of very broad area of industrial manufacturing, does it feel like a test bed for, like, the next, you know, spinouts or potential companies or tech that Amazon would be interested in, or do these... Should we be viewing this as a completely completely separate animal and just doing something that has a thread of Amazon connected to it?
00:33:39 · Sean O’Kane, Anthony Ha
[00:33:39] S3: I I think it's probably more the latter. I think, you know, you and I both know in the amount of effort we put in to try to nail down Bezos' investment in Slate Auto, we really came away from... It was an investment that he made, and it was not something he was controlling day to day. And we've we've spoken to their leadership a bunch of times since then about how he isn't involved in that day to day. And I, you know, I think we've heard similar things in in trying to report out that story about the connections to Rebuild. I think it would be silly to deny the obvious connections. Like, there's just so many executives at Rebuild that that have spent a lot of time at Amazon. And I think there is, you know, a network there that is supporting it that is very Amazon heavy. And so I think that there's there's DNA there for sure, but I don't think this is something where Amazon is gonna make this an arm of itself or anything anytime soon. This feels very focused and something that that Jeff Wilke and his partner, Miles Arnold, are are are are running with conviction and are gonna try and do something on their own. [00:34:44] S0: Alright. Well, that is all the time we have, but Equity will be back next week. And in the meantime, you can follow us at Equity Pod on X and Threads. Thanks so much for listening.