Amulya Vishwanath has a front-row view of the robotics industry — and in her assessment, it's nowhere near its breakthrough moment. The former Nvidia product marketing lead for the company's robotics platforms, who spent seven years at the company, says the field is still in its "Lego era," with the basic building blocks — actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards — still being rebuilt.
Her view runs counter to a growing chorus of founders and investors who believe a general foundation model will soon give robotics its "ChatGPT moment," a reference to the shockingly capable chatbot that launched in late 2022 and went mainstream in months.
Vishwanath, now the founder and managing partner of Techable VC, told TechCrunch's Equity podcast that the gap between AI software capability and physical hardware remains wide. While OpenAI went from zero to mass adoption almost overnight, robotics companies face years of hardware iteration, manufacturing scale-up, and real-world testing.
As one of the first women executives to spin out of Nvidia, Vishwanath's early-stage fund invests in physical AI across robotics, materials science, and life sciences — and she argues the real opportunity lies in rebuilding those fundamental components, not in bolting foundation models onto existing hardware.
The ChatGPT moment for robotics may come, she suggests, but on a longer timeline — the industry first has to finish building its Lego bricks.