The Robot Report Podcast
00:57:03 · Aaron Nathan
[00:57:03] S2: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely been an inflection point, and I think there's a few factors that contribute to it. I mean, first of all, like, the nature of our business, especially the early parts of RTK, were that you needed to get to a certain level of scale to be able to service, like, a consumer business. Right? Like, when you buy your BOA at Home Depot, I can't, like, guess if we're gonna have coverage when you take it home. We just have to know that. And so there was a level of critical scale that we hit, and that was that was a big transition for us about, I'd say, like, three years ago where we had, you know, one of the largest professionally run corrections networks out there. Now the other thing that we've done and seen is that physical AI or, you know, whatever we love to call it now, it's gone from something that was like, hey. We can cool... Do all these cool demos in the lab to these things are actually working and delivering value. And we're seeing it, I think, in two contexts. There are some consumer use cases, like the lawnmowers that are at scale. I would argue that not self driving cars quite yet, because those are still relatively small, but the high levels of advanced driver assistance that we see, has been another huge area of consumer. And then when you go into the industrial sector, which is where, like, the vast majority of our customers are, it's just like these point solutions have just delivered so much value, like, in agriculture, you know, being able to do, like, weeding really well for lettuce. You know? It's like, that's a big deal. And so we we just see that, like, the applications are working, and so that's putting demand on us. And it's resulted, like, just in the last year, I think we've 10 x ed the number of customers that we actually have. And that's that's just, like, a really amazing stat, especially given, like, I don't think the market's slowing down. Like, if anything, it's continuing to accelerate. The other piece that's really interesting for us is that all of these, customers, like, the deployments are still relatively small in the industrial sector, but they're growing very quickly. So they're seeing, like, this high level of adoption as they're moving from, like, pilots to actual, like, being rolled out across, you know, multiple facilities, etcetera. So, yeah, all great tailwinds.
00:59:30 · Eugene Demetri, Aaron Nathan
[00:59:30] S3: Yeah. Well, you talked about that 10x growth. I know Point One raised 35,000,000 in series c funding led by CrossLab Ventures. What does that enable as you as you continue scaling up? [00:59:42] S2: Yeah. So one of the big things that we've been doing is trying to get into more markets. So, you know, obviously, we started here in The US. That's... We're headquartered in San Francisco. And then since then, you know, we've really put a lot of effort into global expansion. So we just actually announced a large partnership with Orange, who's one of the largest telcos in Europe and, frankly, around the world. And, you know, we're also doing, you know, business in Asia and, like, trying to figure out how do we actually solve this problem not just from a US perspective, but actually have, like, a global solution because we've seen, actually, our technology is most valuable to the biggest companies who actually are thinking at a global scale. And this is really, like, I think, a great thing for us as a business because we're now able to go in and say, yes. We have something that will work in US, in Europe, in Japan, you know, in South Korea, in New Zealand, in Australia, and, you know, we're expanding even beyond just that. And I think that's, that's a really powerful value proposition when you're trying to make a product that serves all those markets.
01:00:55 · Mike Oitzman
[01:00:55] S1: Wow. So I I curious what's next? You know, we've talked about ag robots as one of the growing markets and where I've seen, as you already said, a lot of companies adopting new technology for the accuracy it gives them in the workflows that they're trying to deploy. But, you know, what's around the corner? What what excites you about this industry or other industries as well as the growth of the company?
01:01:18 · Aaron Nathan
[01:01:18] S2: Yeah. I mean, there's been amazing advancements, I think, in the overall architecture for how people are building these robotic systems. You know, foundational models are transforming how we think about, you know, just robotics in general. And, you know, several of the companies leading in that field are customers, And we are trying to figure out the right way to bring location in a, like, maximally useful way in that context. And so if you have these kind of, like, parallel systems, which is what we're kind of seeing shake out as the default today where you have some model based, you know, decision system, and then you also have, like, a more traditional stack of perception, planning, and acting. Location is ultimately, like, kind of, like, common between those two pieces of the stack. We are trying to think how do we bring Point One into that ecosystem in a way that's native, I guess you could say. The other piece is just, you know, how do we continue on our North Star vision of making... You know, positioning work everywhere with a high degree of reliability. And, you know, we have a lot of work in our lab that, you know, is not quite yet ready, but it is something that I'm very excited for the future because, yeah, robotics is not slowing down, and I still believe... What I believed in 2016, which is that we will have a demand for more robotic systems to have high precision location than we do all the humans and phones combined today.
01:02:54 · Mike Oitzman, Aaron Nathan
[01:02:54] S1: Any opportunity to bring it indoors? We think... We talk about the outdoor location problem, but we also think about warehouses and and manufacturing lines in... Under the roof. Is is there a future application where this or some other new technology provides the accuracy those robots need? [01:03:14] S2: Yeah. I mean, it's it's a very clear need, and we're studying that quite a bit. You know, the technologies that are out there today, like ultra wideband or, you know, Bluetooth beaconing, They're great for tracking, like, hey. Where's the tool or where's the package along the, you know, the the pallet line or something, but it's not sufficient to navigate a robot. And so Yeah. You know, you can imagine a world where our technology works in tandem with, you know, indoor technologies to be able to deliver that, like, common coordinate system I was talking about. [01:03:50] S1: Mhmm. [01:03:50] S2: But, yeah, I I think it's it's an absolutely exciting area, and we are definitely exploring to see, you know, the right way for Point One to, service not just the outside, but the indoor and the outside and in between. Awesome. [01:04:06] S1: Well, hey. One more time before we let you go. Fuse is coming up. November 19, tell us one more pitch on on that event and and and what folks should expect and who should come.
01:04:06 · Mike Oitzman, Aaron Nathan, Steve Crowe
[01:04:06] S1: Well, hey. One more time before we let you go. Fuse is coming up. November 19, tell us one more pitch on on that event and and and what folks should expect and who should come. [01:04:16] S2: If you are building robotic systems and you use location in any way, which basically, unless you have a statically mounted arm, like, you probably had experienced a lot of these problems, you should be at this event. So November 19 in San Francisco at the foundry, We have... Our website is fuse.0.1nav.com. And any listeners here, they can get a 30% discount. The code is Fuse Robot Report, and I'm sure we could put a link in the bio or something. Absolutely. [01:04:53] S1: Yeah. Fuse Robot Report, all one word. So thanks for that. Appreciate you extending that to our listeners, and I hope folks... If you're listening, go sign up. Be there. It's... It'll be the place to be if you wanna learn about the latest and location. So, Aaron Nathan, thank you so much for for joining us and sharing an update on where you guys are, and and look forward to following your guys' success in the future. [01:05:17] S2: No. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Gene. [01:05:24] S0: Great stuff there. Thanks again to Aaron for for joining us there. I liked where you said, Mike, location. This is a a quote quote. Location is one of those things you really have to get right early in the design process of your robotic system. Otherwise, everything else downstream kind of falls apart. I think that's a good model for folks listening to this to make sure they follow.