A conversation with Ben Bolte — AI & Robotics Engineer, formerly K-Scale Labs, now at OpenAI About the Speaker Ben Bolte is a roboticist and AI engineer who recently joined OpenAI. He previously founded and led K-Scale Labs, building open-source general-purpose humanoid robots for embodied intelligence. Before that, he worked at
Takeaways from Quanting Xie's presentation at CMU's Lab to Market, San Francisco — February 11, 2026 Increase a gear ratio by 100x and the reflected inertia increases by 10,000x. That single physics problem explains one of the biggest disconnects in robotics right now: we can build
A quiet but powerful consensus is building among robotics founders who are deploying real systems at scale: the hardware that powers today's most advanced robots is not the hardware that will power the robot revolution. While general-purpose AI accelerators from giants like NVIDIA have been instrumental in getting
Executive Summary: The development of general-purpose robots has converged on a critical, near-term strategy: leveraging human-operated teleoperation to generate the vast datasets required for training embodied AI foundation models. While effective, this approach has created a strategic schism in the market. This briefing provides a framework for analyzing the divergent
Introduction The field of Artificial Intelligence is undergoing a profound shift, moving beyond the digital realm of text and images into the complex, dynamic environment of the physical world. At the heart of this transition are Vision-Language Models (VLMs), a groundbreaking technology that enables machines to understand and interact with
In this series, we’ve explored the mission-critical role of thin films in extreme environments: the thermal barrier coatings that allow jet turbines to operate at impossible temperatures, the nanoscale layers that form the architecture of every semiconductor chip, and the delicate electrode coatings that determine the performance of every
The electric vehicle revolution and the global transition to renewable energy are built on a single, foundational technology: the lithium-ion battery. This market is in a state of explosive, unprecedented growth. In 2024, annual battery demand surpassed 1 terawatt-hour (TWh) for the first time, a historic milestone. By 2030, that
In the digital age, the semiconductor is the bedrock of progress. From the smartphone in your pocket to the vast data centers powering the cloud, these tiny silicon marvels are the engines of the modern world. Now, a new and insatiable demand for artificial intelligence is pushing the semiconductor industry
From the roar of a jet engine propelling an aircraft across continents to the steady hum of a gas turbine generating electricity for our cities, we are surrounded by feats of immense power. These machines operate at the very edge of material science, harnessing controlled explosions and extreme temperatures to
I recently had a long, candid conversation with a robotics founder who’s deep in the trenches - not building flashy demos, but trying to get robots deployed in real industrial environments. No press releases. No humanoid hype. Just real customers, real contracts, and real headaches. The conversation stuck with
In the ever-churning world of venture capital, it's easy to get caught up in the noise: the hype cycles, the fundraising frenzy, the relentless pursuit of the next unicorn. It is a rare and grounding experience to step away from that noise and sit down with a seasoned
A comprehensive report from the UNION Deep Tech Commercialization Bootcamp. Feb 04 2026 On February 4th, a curated group of founders, VCs, and corporate leaders gathered at the SVB Experience Center in San Francisco for "Crossing the Divide," a tactical bootcamp focused on the gritty realities of commercializing