How YC-backed Bucket Robotics survived its first CES |

The weather in Las Vegas wasn’t looking good. The planhad beenthateach employee of YC-backedBucket Roboticswouldcarry parts of their boothin their luggagetothe 2026Consumer Electronics Show. But CEO and founder Matt Puchalskididn’twant to takethechancethatone(or all)oftheir flights would be delayed.Soherented a Hyundai Santa Feand packed it up.

“It was… it was tight,” he said with a laughon theshowfloor.

It took 12 hours driving in the rain, but the gear –and Puchalski– made itsafelyto Las Vegas, and so began the young company’s first-everCES.

San Francisco-based Bucket Roboticswasjustone of thousands of companies exhibiting at the annual tech conference, a speck of sand on a beach full of products and promises. But despite itsmodest setup in the automotive-focused West Hall, Puchalski said the tripwasworth it.

Part of that was a willingness to betireless,observant, and always ready to pitch.

An engineer bytrade,Puchalski spent most of the last decade working on autonomous vehicles at Uber,Argo AI, Ford’ssubsidiaryLatitude AI, and SoftBank-backed Stack AV.

At those jobs,Puchalski developeddeepconnections in the automotive industry, and we crossed paths all week.

There he was at an industry networking party one night. On another night,in my hotel lobby at 10 p.m., he was debating how tobalance quality and manufacturing yield with Sanjay Dastoor—founder of mobility startups Skip and Boosted,both of which also got off the ground at YC.

ButI first ran into Puchalskiduringbreakfastat the hotel.Seated at the table next to me,he andsales associate Max Joseph were running through preparations for the conference’s “MediaDay” over (allegedly) cage-free eggs.

Puchalski’s verve piqued my interest, and after making an intro, he told mewhat Bucket Robotics is up to. Before I knew it, he had cracked open a bright yellow Pelican case and I was holding a small piece of plastic.

Started as part of YC’s Spring 2024 batch, Bucket Robotics is all about using advanced vision systems to do quality inspections, specifically for surfaces. The goal is to automate a menial task that Puchalski joked is usually done by “dudes in Wisconsin,” and to accelerate the broad, multi-industry effort to onshore manufacturing.

One example Puchalski offered was car door handles. It’s a part customers touch every day, so it needs to be structurally sound, and that kind of quality inspection is basically solved.

But it can be challenging to make sure the surface is flawless. Is the color right? Are there any burn or scuff marks? These are the questions Bucket Robotics wants to answer.

“It’s deeply hard to automate these types of challenges withouthuge volumes of data, so auto manufacturers just throw dudes in Wisconsin at this problem,” he said.

Bucket Roboticssolves that dataproblembyworkingfrom the CAD filesfora particular part. It then generatesa bunch of simulated defects– burn marks, bumps, breaks – so that its visionsoftwarecan detect those problems quickly on a production line.

There’s no need for manual labeling, and the company claims its models can deploy “in minutes” while also adapting if products or production lines change.One of the big selling points to date is that Bucket Robotics can integrate into existing production lines without adding new hardware, Puchalski said.

This has already attracted customers in automotive and in defense, setting up Bucket Robotics to pursue the increasingly popular path of becoming a “dual-use” company.

When the show floor opened,the first twohourswere “intense,” Puchalski said.Attendees in suits snooped around thestartup’stables,plucked orange stickers with the Bucket Robotics logo, and quizzedthe employees about their tech.

More importantly, Puchalski said the level of interest stayed consistent throughout the week. He had “real technical discussions” with people from the worlds of manufacturing, robotics, and automation. He said Friday thathe’sspent the week sincethe showon follow-up calls with prospective customers and investors.

CES can be a slog,but Bucket Robotics survived. Now comes the actual hard part: building a business, scaling, fundraising, and striking commercial deals.

As for the “dudes in Wisconsin,”Puchalskidoesn’tseehis companyasa threat to their livelihoods. Those jobs arejust as muchabout spottingdefects as they are aboutidentifyingthe root cause of the problem, he said.

And besides, Puchalski added, automating surface quality inspection is something that the manufacturing industry has been trying to do for decades.

“Sowhen we go to our customers, it’s incredibly exciting,” he said.