#4 JMoon Newsletter - March 2024 I

Highlights (1 Mar to 15 Mar 2024)

1. Connected with 8 Founders, 1 GPs, 2 Startup Advisors, 1 Incubators across North America over Zoom
2. Attended the March AI Meetup in Toronto by Mindstone
3. Attended my 2nd Keiretsu Forum Canada Investor Meeting
4. Delivered a workshop on Business Model Execution for entrepreneurs in Venture Catalyst's Winter Cohort by YSpace, York University
5. Got to share my pitchdeck with and learn from provided by other first time fund managers within Cohort 13 of VC Lab
6. Spent 4 days in Austin getting to know wonderful people in the startup ecosystem and finally getting to meet Wolf Starr Melissa Barall, CFA Marie Schmidt in person along with so many more existing Linkedin connections of founders, angels, VCs, and other capital allocators, from all over US and specially the supportive ecosystem in that region. I'll be reaching out to you all again soon to talk more about what we discussed about my next adventure at the event! There was so much to do in those 4 days that its hard to fit into 1 newsletter, but it turned out to be an incredibly rewarding first ever trip to Texas.
7. Attended the Unicorn Pitches event by Network VC
8. Remotely attended a Family Office event over 2 days where I got to learn so much from those who pitched and spoke about their experiences in how Family offices look at VC as an asset class and what new and emerging fund managers can do better to have them as their LPs
9. Connected with and met Jasvinder Singh Kwatra after nearly 14 years since we graduated from engineering college

Physical AI

6D's of Physical AI, PART I : Dirty Environments

In sectors where cleanliness is paramount yet the environment inherently dirty – like waste management and mining – robotics and IoT are game changers. Robots equipped with AI can navigate and operate in these conditions 24/7, performing tasks like sorting waste or mining minerals. IoT devices monitor environmental conditions, ensuring safety and optimizing operations without human exposure to potentially hazardous substances. There are incredible applications waiting to happen in this space that will improve health and safety for all workers who are responsible for sanitation in various environments.

Tips for Physical AI Founders

If you are building within this space, leverage as much of grant and other non-dilutive funding available to you in the early stages as you can. Most of the fundings in this space go directly from Angel to Seed with a long time in between those rounds due to several reasons (Ask me why and if it applies to your startup), so start focusing on becoming revenue generating as soon as possible.

Hardware Research, Startups, and Market

Tesla's Optimus is becoming more impressive: https://qz.com/tesla-optimus-humanoid-robots-elon-musk-1851291062 but Joe Rogan is concerned: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-doing-joe-rogan-flipped-124600163.html Don't worry Joe, ethical roboticists won't let it turn into a terminator scenario. Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are still highly regarded and carefully considered when building robots.

LLMs will be incredibly helpful in the adoption of robotics and IoT devices for homes because of this: https://www.freethink.com/robots-ai/robots-that-speak-your-accent-are-more-trusted-study-shows and it also allows for the creation of general purpose robots: https://www.caixinglobal.com/2024-03-09/weekly-previewai-large-models-illuminate-the-future-of-general-purpose-robotics-tech-giants-enter-the-arena-102173754.html LLMs+LAMs+Hardware will be THE combination that leads us to AGI

ABB is getting into AI Robots sector of Physical AI: https://www.wsj.com/articles/abb-opens-revamped-robotics-center-in-michigan-amid-growing-demand-for-ai-robots-bf6af076

Autonomous Robots are coming to all sectors: https://www.bvp.com/atlas/the-autonomous-robotics-future-is-around-the-corner

BMW to deploy Humanoid Robots: https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/98340-bmw-to-deploy-humanoid-robots

Deep Learning AI models for streamlining robotic warehouse operations: https://news.mit.edu/2024/new-ai-model-could-streamline-operations-robotic-warehouse-0227

Profound thoughts on VC collaboration in Deeptech by Hyuk-Jeen Suh https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/01/venx-collaborative-launch/

Worm-like robots for obstacle navigation: https://www.thoroldtoday.ca/local-news/beyond-local-we-designed-wormlike-limbless-robots-that-navigate-obstacle-courses-they-could-be-used-for-search-and-rescue-one-day-8382859

Tour of Boston Dynamics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO-PHRd436s

Robots are coming by Daniela Rus : https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/05/1087646/the-robots-are-coming-and-thats-a-good-thing-2/

Robots to assist in dressing people in Eldercare which also uses AI for learning from demonstration: https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-robot-mimic-actions-workers.html and helping with their loneliness: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-sci-tech/hyodol-an-ai-robot-to-help-senior-citizens-beat-loneliness-9210716/

Robots like these in hospitals will continue to rise: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/robots-in-health-care-hutchinson-hospital/

Self Replicating robots in Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo863_0SI_o

Robot assisting the blind: https://www.zdnet.com/article/for-the-vision-impaired-this-ai-robot-aims-to-replace-canes-and-guide-dogs/

Wheeled Humanoids: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/13/reflex-robotics-wheeled-humanoid-is-here-to-grab-you-a-snack/

Better Robot Navigation in uncertain environments: https://news.mit.edu/2024/researchers-help-robots-navigate-efficiently-uncertain-environments-0314

Covariant AI introduced RFM1 that uses Large AI models (LXMs) with capabilities of Language (LLM) and Multimodal (LMM): https://covariant.ai/insights/introducing-rfm-1-giving-robots-human-like-reasoning-capabilities/ and https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/11/covariant-is-building-chatgpt-for-robots/

Hardware and Venture Capital Funding

Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Microsoft to invest in Figure AI: https://www.ft.com/content/3f7e86e1-123a-4fba-af0a-680d955125c0

$60M invested in Bear Robotics: https://svdaily.com/2024/03/14/lg-leads-60-million-investment-in-bear-robotics/

Wandelbots raises $84M Series C: https://www.aol.com/wandelbots-84m-series-c-marks-060000292.html (Series B was at roughly $30M, Series A was < $7M)

Freespace Robotics raises from US Steel: https://pulse2.com/freespace-robotics-raises-strategic-investment-from-u-s-steel/

Cambrian Robotics gets $3.5M in Seed Funding: https://www.therobotreport.com/cambrian-robotics-obtains-seed-funding-to-provide-vision-for-complex-tasks/