We’vesaid it before, andwe’llsay it again: the autonomousvehiclespace is starting to feel like a repeat ofthe2016 hype cycle. Travis Kalanick isback building a robotics company, and the talent wars and capital are heating up the same way they did the first time around. The money’s flowing back, andit’sthe people who lived through that first wave who are building the next one.
Humble Roboticsfounder and CEO Eyal Cohen is one of them. Cohen was at Otto when Uber came calling, later followed Anthony Levandowski to Pronto, and after two decades bouncing between deep tech bets in the Bay Area, his new company came out of stealth in April with $24 million to build a fully autonomous,cablesselectric hauler for freight.
On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Cohen joins Kirsten Korosec to talk about AV déjà vu and whathe’slearned from15 years ofbuilding startups across electrification, solar, and robotics.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
- The bet behind Humble’scablessdesign and why “the simplest possible robotics platform” was the starting point
- How vision models are replacing months of hand-built engineering work that used to go into recognizing things like traffic cones and stop signs
- Why Cohen thinks culture beats out compensation when it comes to securing talent in robotics these days
Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. Youalso canfollow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.
Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.
You can contact or verify outreach from Kirsten by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at kkorosec.07 on Signal.
Theresa Loconsolo is an audio producer at TechCrunch focusing on Equity, the network’s flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch in 2022, she was one of 2 producers at a four-station conglomerate where she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered live performances and interviews from guests like lovelytheband. Theresa is based in New Jersey and holds a bachelors degree in Communication from Monmouth University.
You can contact or verify outreach from Theresa by emailing [email protected].