CEO @ Bedrock Robotics; Previous @ Waymo, leading Autonomous Trucking; CEO @ Anki. Staying busy, with lots of fun being in the thick of it with 3 kids.
San Francisco, CA
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- Followers 2,450
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Boris Sofman retweeted
The news is out. This morning on @BloombergTV, we shared our first fully autonomous excavator deployments, running live on multiple construction sites with @Sundt, Zachry Construction Corporation, and @ChampSitePrep.
Making an excavator fully autonomous is one of the hardest problems in robotics. These are high degree of freedom machines working in loose, unstructured terrain under conditions that can change hourly. Getting to this milestone took not just decades of hard-won experience scaling autonomous vehicle fleets, but deep collaboration with contractors who opened up their offices and job sites to us. Throughout, we had a team that refused to cut corners on safety or reliability.
We're unbelievably proud of that.
Thank you to @Bloomberg and @EdLudlow for this morning's coverage, linked in the thread, and to the partners building this alongside us. The future of construction is being built in the field, and we are grateful to be building it with you.
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Autonomy in construction isn’t a zero sum game. We love working with the incredible operators and partners that teach us so much about how we can boost their productivity and unlock the country to build what it needs! (Jared, the star here, just had a baby - go Jared!!!)
We’re building robots to build what our country needs.
@BedrockRobotics doesn’t just have the best engineers, it’s got the best equipment operators. People who have spent their entire careers gaining insight and intuition about these machines and the work they do.
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Giant autonomous excavators, live on construction sites!
At @BedrockRobotics, we’re giving contractors and their teams new tools to build more of what America needs, with greater safety, speed, and predictability. We started with excavators, but Bedrock’s mission extends far beyond a single machine type. It is about creating a new layer of autonomous orchestration for the equipment that shapes our world.
Excited about the next chapter!
Today we announced the first fully autonomous excavators working on their own on commercial sites.
With @Sundt, @ChampSitePrep and Zachry, Bedrock machines are moving earth on three projects in TX and NV.
We started with excavators. The mission goes far beyond one machine.
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Congrats to the entire @EclipseVentures team on this perfectly timed raise. The building blocks are all aligned for a transformational next decade: enabling breakthroughs in technology, spiking needs and pain points across so many physical industries, and such uniquely calibrated and complementary experience in this amazing team (@AidanMadiganC, @Sethwinterroth, and the whole crew)!
Such a pleasure building with you all!
Eleven years ago we started @EclipseVentures and bet everything on atoms. Rockets, robots, chips, factories, power systems, defense. The things civilization actually runs on.
Today, we're announcing $1.3B in new capital to keep building.
The physical world is overdue for transformation. Transportation runs on systems designed decades ago. The energy grid cannot keep up with demand. Healthcare depends on manual procedures that don't scale. Defense development moves at a fraction of the speed threats evolve. These are not software problems. They are full stack engineering and operations problems, and they have been underinvested in for a generation.
But there has never been a better moment to solve them. The best engineers are leaving big tech to build in the physical world. AI is compressing timelines from years to quarters. Policy is aligned. And customers are not waiting — the DoD, the hyperscalers, hospitals, and the Fortune 500 are all desperate for technology that makes physical systems smarter, faster, and more resilient. Talent, capital, technology, policy, and demand are all converging at once.
This is our moment 🇺🇸
We built Eclipse for this exact moment and in doing so, we launched a movement. Today that movement is 100 companies strong (and growing!). These companies supply each other, share customers, and help solve each other's hardest problems. Propulsion systems powering orbital defense. Modern supply chain infrastructure moving the worlds goods. Autonomous vehicles on three continents. Surgical robots performing procedures that used to require the world's best hands. Cloud hardware powering the AI revolution built on American soil. That's not a fund. That's an economy — an Eclipse Economy.
The door is open to rebuild the physical infrastructure of the country. We intend to run through it.
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Fun Chat8VC conversation next Tuesday October 14th in SF with @BedrockRobotics and @AppliedInt discussing challenges in building robust AVs and autonomy systems, training, and shipping products. Thanks for hosting @8vc! (Signup link below)
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Signup here! gatsby.events/8vc/rsvp/regis…
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I’m excited to share what I’ve been up to for the past year. Introducing @BedrockRobotics where we are bringing full autonomy to heavy equipment—starting in construction. Construction underpins nearly every industry and is surging in demand—yet we face a 500K worker shortage. The bottleneck isn’t capital—it’s capacity. We're pursuing a bold mission: enable true autonomy on the jobsite, and in doing so, help the industry meet rising demand with higher quality, predictability, and safety. Exciting journey ahead!
Learn more at bedrockrobotics.com
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Great overview and lens on the robotics ecosystem by @Sethwinterroth. There have been inflection points over the past few years in ML capabilities, cost of hardware, and available tools / infrastructure that unlocks huge potential in these areas. Exciting times ahead!
In robotics circles, there's a consensus: we're on the brink of a productivity boom — driven by the American labor shortage and an unprecedented demand for automation. Yet, over 80% of warehouses lack automation, and there are only 141 robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees.
Inspired by recent conversations with robotics leaders like @Vikas_Enti, @AdrianMacneil, @vijaycivs, and @kevinmpeterson1, I have more conviction than ever:
The next wave of robotics startups is poised to boost output in unprecedented ways, ushering in a new golden age of economic growth and prosperity.
This post details why developing Embodied AI is the opportunity of our generation:
eclipse.vc/blog/embodied-ai-…
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Big @Waymo milestone is happening shortly - first fully-driverless freeway operations! It's a really meaning checkpoint in the overall arc of Robotics / AI (and hopefully feels very normal soon!) Many interesting challenges hidden inside of this step...
forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman…
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This has been a heartbreaking weekend watching the news of the horrific attacks in Israel with over 700 dead and over 100 taken hostage. The images and videos will be hard to forget. Thinking of the many friends with family members deployed, hiding in bunkers, or missing. ❤️🩹🇮🇱
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This is when the magic of @Waymo really shines. A scrutinizing customer, Noa said “he drives very well!” and thanked the car after we got out. 5 stars? I guess so. 🤷♂️
It’s come a long way! Been an exciting stretch and it’s fun to see us start to ramp as a real public service.
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Huge milestone! With this, it’ll be possible to start opening up Waymo One to everyone in SF. 🍻
We’ve been waiting for this moment and now we can share it with you: Today, we received our paid driverless permit from the CPUC! In the coming weeks, we’ll begin charging fares for rider-only trips and welcoming new riders into Waymo One in San Francisco. waymo.com/blog/2023/08/waymo…
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Exciting day at the @Waymo office as our first autonomous @DaimlerTruckNA Cascadia trucks hit the roads in Texas! Tons of joint work went into designing these together with the DT team. Couldn't resist capturing the team watching the special moment from all over the country.
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Between passenger cars and autonomous trucks, we have accrued millions of miles driving on freeways. The leverage between different products is growing. And now we’re testing the @Waymo Driver on new Daimler Freightliner Cascadia trucks on I-45 in TX! Exciting times!
Seeing more of our Jaguar I-PACEs on freeways? We’ve got a long history of freeway driving with both our passenger cars and trucks, and we’re now testing our 5th-generation #WaymoDriver on freeways across Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area. Who recognizes this one? 🤖🚘🛣️
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We're excited to be working with @UberFreight on this long-term partnership and the opportunity to reshape logistics together. Game on!
Just keep truckin' oooooonnnnnn 🚚 With @UberFreight and @Waymo teaming up on autonomous trucks, CNBC's @Lebeaucarnews breaks down the partnership worth "billions of miles."
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Congrats to everyone at @Waymo — in addition to opening up driverless in SF, this completes our transition to our next gen sensors / compute and a heavily rewritten software stack which will accelerate our progress going forward (all these are also used in our trucks!) Way to go!
We’re taking the next step in our journey—both in San Francisco and in Phoenix. Last week, our employees began taking fully autonomous rides in the City by the Bay, and soon we’ll be expanding our Waymo One Trusted Tester program into Downtown Phoenix. blog.waymo.com/2022/03/takin…
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Fantastic piece from @NBCNightlyNews and @GadiNBC featuring the @Waymo Via autonomous trucks. Our driver Bob stole the show - 4M+ lifetime miles truck driving! nbcnews.com/nightly-news/vid…
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Thank you for the great conversation, @lexfridman! Really enjoyed the discussions and walk through the memories.
Here's my conversation with Boris Sofman about the future of robotics. He is the head of autonomous trucking at @Waymo, and previously, the founder and CEO of Anki that created Cozmo, one of the greatest social robots ever. piped.video/watch?v=U_AREIyd…
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