Building up and tearing down
Reading Time: 4 minutesI managed to squeeze the remaining vestiges out of CES 2023 in last week’s Actuator. The good news is that things are starting to pick up again like clockwork. If you’ve emailed me about work stuff in the past week, I apologize for the delay — I’ve been out of one frying pan and into the next. Anecdotally, I’ll say this is a net positive. Robotics news took a brief respite over the holidays, but things are coming fast and furious again.
It’s not all good news, of course. The calendar reset a couple weeks back — but unfortunately, all of the economic doom and gloom doesn’t get a fresh start with it. This year is going to be a reckoning. As ominous as it sounds, this is not a wholly good or bad thing, mind. It’s more that, after two years of relentless optimism for robotics and automation, the check is coming due for many.
This will be a year of sink or swim for many. As VC becomes harder to come by, runways suddenly shorten, and to sufficiently stretch the metaphor, no one wants to deal with a shrinking runway at takeoff. If you can’t rope in that $20 million round you were banking on, suddenly you’re faced with some extremely hard decisions. That could take the form of a pivot, a severe belt tightening (layoffs, thinning out the roadmap), exploring a sell-off or other worst-case scenario.
All of the above options involve an existential change for everyone involved. Again, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Some well-positioned firms will come out of it better, as a clear front runner in the category. It could mean acquiring a smaller firm, combining teams and coming out stronger for it. Heck, even those who have had to take the extremely unfortunate (and life-altering) action of layoffs could ultimately come out the other side with a kind of renewed sense of focus.
All of this is top of mind, in part, because of the recent Intrinsic news, which just missed the deadline for last week’s newsletter. It’s a weird one. I’m hoping to catch up with the Alphabet team soon to discuss a series of events that included a couple of acquisitions followed by a 20% staff reduction, amounting to around 40 people. Certainly I’m aware that the timeline for acquisitions and personnel decisions don’t always line up in an ideal fashion.
I’m always keenly aware of how big companies like Alphabet make these sorts of decisions for their bottom line. The fact is that it can be a lot harder to justify long-tail commitments — particularly those that aren’t deemed essential to the company’s core mission. None of this should be taken as a repudiation of Intrinsic’s mission, of course — the work it and other companies are doing in the robotics software space is key to the future of industrial implementation. If I had to venture a guess (as I am contractually obligated to do), I would say that it’s more a reprioritization on Alphabet’s part.
No question in my mind this was a difficult decision. Among other things, it’s not the sort of vote of confidence a young company is hoping for out the gate. But Intrinsic has a lot of smart folks on board — even more so after those acquisitions — and in spite of the downsizing, Alphabet does, of course, have tremendous resources if and when it turns that faucet back on.
The other bit of news I wanted to touch on off the top was yesterday’s Boston Dynamics news. One thing’s for sure — the Massachusetts firm makes a mean video. A few dropped this week showcasing new grippers for Atlas. The humanoid robot utilizes its new appendages to lend a couple of hands at a makeshift construction site. Here’s a breakdown from BD:
I would caution that nothing Boston Dynamics shows should be read as anything more than proof of concept. That’s doubly the case with Atlas, which is a research robot, through and through. The caveat here, of course, is that new(ish) owner, Hyundai, has been very aggressive about commercializing these products. Imagining some more productized Atlas offspring helping out around their automotive factories doesn’t seem far out of the realm of possibility, for example.
Atlas certainly has a sizable head start on Tesla’s promised (threatened?) all-purpose humanoid. It remains to be seen what Figure is working on as well. Most of all, I look forward to a renewed, spirited debate around making robots in our own image.
Here’s a fun piece from Devin about a drone from Swiss scientists designed to collect ‘external DNA’ from treetops. That means cruising around picking up evidence like skin, feathers and waste to determine what animals have been hanging out in the area. Devin here:
This week, German firm United Robotics Group announced last week that it’s acquiring Spanish mobile robotics and manipulation startup/video game hedgehog antagonizer, Robotnik Automation. URG cites the company’s strong foothold in markets like Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, the U.S., France, Germany and Italy as a key motivator in the acquisition.
Says United Robotics co-CEO Thomas Linkenheil:
If there’s one thing we’re passionate about here at Actuator HQ, it’s leveraging synergies.
Lastly for the week is me trying to find a way to convince the T&E team to get me back to Pittsburgh for the week, to check out the nonprofit ‘Robotics Factory.’ With backing from CMU and the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, it’s definitely a space worth watching in the coming year.
Per the official site:
All right, back to work for me. I’ve got a bunch of stories in the works that will be popping up in future Actuators. Be the first to see ’em by signing up here.
Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/19/building-up-and-tearing-down/
Ref: techcrunch
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