The Robotics Stack
00:43:53 · Xara
[00:43:53] S2: Yeah. I I I think, Leo, it's great that you come down to China and visit a robotic company. And what you observe is that there's so many robotics company right now in China, especially humanoids, but, basically, none of them makes money other than Unitree. Unitree is the only profitable humanoid company right now on the planet. Even Tesla Optimus, right, or Figure does not make money. But Unitree, I think they did $1,000,000,000 in profit last year in in RMB because there's no real business application yet for humanoids. Right? So if we are able to prove that we're the first real business usage, the first product that's ready for mass market and for consumer, I think it's a big thing in robotic history. Right? There really isn't an intimacy robot that was actually widely adopted all across the world, and we aim to be the one of the first to do it. But I think it's good for robotic space because if we're able to prove that this is a sustainable business model, we have to remember intimacy is a feature. Right? The product is still humanoids, but intimacy is only part of it. In the future, once we have so many intimacy robots in all kind of household, we will continue to expand our capability. And one of the biggest barrier for a lot of robotics company right now, one of the worst thing is that they're not inside your house. Right? If robots are so good... If humanoids are so good, where are them? They're just doing dancing on on televisions. They're just doing dancing on TikTok. They're not inside our house. So if we are able to be the first humanoid company that actually goes inside people's house, then we collect so much data about household situation. Later on with that data, we can train better and better robotic model that can become more generalized and become more robust in all kind of household and situations. Our angle, our ambition definitely is we we do believe in AI. We do believe in a a more generalized platform. But I think as a company, we have to slowly move into that directions. Right? We shouldn't rush into it because we believe that a company in order to be healthy, it needs to be have a sustainable business first. It cannot just relies on just burning our investor or VC money. And and I think earlier, Oskar was asking us about our investment situations. We're very lucky to be backed by 18 different investors.
00:45:48 · Xara, Oskar
Even though we're only found in less than a year, we have have already raised three rounds. Very soon, we're closing our fourth round. We're very thankful for our investors who really believe in the visions, and we're super excited to bring this to market. And I I think Oskar, earlier was checking out our website. Very soon, we're gonna go on preorder and presale this November, on November 3. [00:46:07] S0: Wow. K. Yeah. I was about to ask, what is the road map? But this is an already direct to customer. Right? [00:46:13] S2: Direct to customers, we're not shipping until the the later part twenty twenty seven. [00:46:17] S0: Okay. Okay.
00:46:17 · Oskar, Xara, Leo
[00:46:17] S0: Okay. Okay. [00:46:17] S2: But there's a there's not no... Is that... We don't ship globally. We only ship to California in United States. We only ship to Japan. Right? Especially Tokyo. We only ship to Germany. Right? Germany is one of the most important part, and we only ship to Netherlands in Europe. So far, we don't surface any other countries in Europe because, you know, Germany and Netherlands, I think the Germanic parts are more open to this kind of thing. Right? Berlin has crazy scenes. And Netherlands, as you know, there's red red light district in Netherlands, and we wanna have Robo Bravo also in Netherlands too. So we we ship initially to countries or cities or provinces where we can service the user. Because as I said, if the robots gets break down, it needs to fix on time. Right? In the initial stage, we only serve a few European countries, Japan and US. We don't sell in China. We don't sell in anywhere in Asia yet other than Japan. We're we're actually a Cayman Island American company, and none of our business is in in China. We we just utilizing the entire Chinese supply chain because they're very, robotic supply chain, but our our best business, obviously, is global. The first stage of our company, we're expand in places where sex is more liberal. You know, they're more welcome to this kind of culture and things. Please go ahead. [00:47:25] S1: I see. Yeah. About your investors, are you actually able to say is there a Chinese, foreign, or a mix of both? [00:47:31] S2: They're actually all foreign investors. We don't have any Chinese investors.
00:47:31 · Xara, Leo
[00:47:31] S2: They're actually all foreign investors. We don't have any Chinese investors. [00:47:33] S1: Okay. Okay. Interesting. [00:47:35] S2: First of all, we cannot take any kind of Chinese money because we're not doing any business in China. So our company all bought back by US ones, and our main market is through The United States. Right? Me, personally, I was US educated. I was very lucky because I'm 32, and for the last thirty two years of my life, I actually spent half of it in in China and Hong Kong, the other half in United States and Canada. So I was very lucky to understand both the Western and the the Chinese culture really well. So utilizing the Chinese supply chain, which is very good for robotics, and understanding the Western market and the Western audience, I think we can utilize the best of both worlds. Right? Because I can keep it very cheap in China, and we can sell it globally. [00:48:10] S1: I see. Most of your staff is in Shenzhen from what I understand, but you are more for an American company in the end than a Chinese company. Is it correct to say that?
00:48:10 · Leo, Xara, Oskar
[00:48:10] S1: I see. Most of your staff is in Shenzhen from what I understand, but you are more for an American company in the end than a Chinese company. Is it correct to say that? [00:48:18] S2: It is American company. And in China, we only have a supply chains. In fact, we don't have any entities in China. But as you as you see, Leo, you probably observe, if anyone's very serious about hardware robotics, Shenzhen is a very good place to be. If if I were to build a robot in Silicon Valley in San Francisco, it's gonna take take me 10 times more time and probably 20 times more cost. Right? It's so much more expensive, and the supply chain, it's just not there. If I were to get a a actuator, a motor, right, in Shenzhen, I only need to drive probably thirty minutes to Dongguan, which is a city right next to Shenzhen to purchase one of the motors and put it on the power machine. But that kind of thing that just does not exist in The United States. And if it exists, it's gonna be so much more expensive. [00:48:56] S0: So most of the parts, the muscles, the skin you're producing yourself, but then actuators, for example, you would outsource.
00:48:56 · Oskar, Xara
[00:48:56] S0: So most of the parts, the muscles, the skin you're producing yourself, but then actuators, for example, you would outsource. [00:49:04] S2: So quick questions. In this stage of our company, we need to quickly prototype. We actually purchased some of the existing motors on the market. Right? And we're very thankful to be in China because a lot of motor supplies are very good. And there's few brands I'll just list it off. Shout out to them. Gauching,, they're great actuator motor suppliers. But now we're slowly moving on to building our own motors and actuators because when looking at motors and actuators, they're 40 to 60% of the cost of a robot. If we were to minimize the cost of robots in the future for mass protections, to some extent, we have to build our own motors and actuator. So to answer your question, we are slowly building our own motor. We recently built a... Assembled team just for Wow. [00:49:41] S0: And that's impressive that you were doing so much r and d then at the same time