Hey, it's Greg

Welcome to the first edition of the Machine Minds newsletter.

This week I sat down with someone who's worked on the original iPhone, built robots for kids, scaled automation at Amazon, and is now rethinking how entire warehouses should operate. It's one of those career arcs that makes every answer more interesting.

More on that below,

Is there a topic you want me to cover on Machine Minds? Hit reply and let me know. I read every response and I'm always looking for what this community wants to dig into next.

In this week's edition:

Recently we spoke with Saurabh Gupta, CTO at GreyOrange (episode 143).

Saurabh's career runs from the original iPhone production line at Apple, to educational robotics at Wonder Workshop, to Amazon, and now to leading GreyOrange's shift from warehouse robot manufacturer to full orchestration platform.

His core argument: the real bottleneck in warehouse automation is getting robots, conveyors, software, and humans to operate as one system. Without that layer, every new piece of automation just creates another silo.

Some of what we covered:

• What Steve Jobs taught him about product design (the best technology is invisible to the user)
• Why the gap between a robotics demo and a real deployment is still one of the industry's biggest unsolved problems
• How AI is creating the most value through exception handling and real-time decisions, not full autonomy
• Why fully autonomous warehouses might be the wrong goal entirely

If you're building, deploying, or investing in automation, this one's worth 45 minutes.

A few active searches that might be relevant to you or someone in your network:

Robotics Software Engineer | San Francisco
Early-stage manufacturing robotics company. Motion planning, trajectory optimization, real-time control, vision-based automation. U.S. Persons only.

CTO | Remote
Venture-backed defense tech company building advanced robotics and AI for real-world deployment. Defining the technical vision, leading the autonomy roadmap, and representing the company externally. U.S. Persons only.

Senior Controls Engineer | San Francisco Bay Area
Warehouse automation company building intelligent systems combining robotics, ASRS, conveyance, and sortation. Hands-on IC role in a Beckhoff TwinCAT environment. Up to 30% travel for commissioning.

Know someone? Reply to this email and send them our way.

I won't be at this one, but I'd be there if I could.

AUTONOMOUS is bringing together 500+ founders, engineers, and investors working on robotics, autonomy, and physical AI. Two stages, four content tracks, and a room full of people actually building in this space.

A few names from the speaker lineup:

• Samir Menon, CEO at Dexterity
• James Kuffner, CTO at Symbotic
• Deepak Pathak, Co-Founder at Skild AI
• Kanu Gulati, Partner at Khosla Ventures
• Tessa Lau, CEO at Dusty Robotics
• Paul Mikesell, CEO at Carbon Robotics
• Jamie Shotton, Chief Scientist at Wayve

Several Machine Minds guests in the mix too. Use code GREG20 for 20% off.

Robotics Startups On Fire As Venture Funding Surges To Record Numbers (Crunchbase)
$18.8B raised in 2026 so far, already past last year's full-year total. Saronic, Neura Robotics, and Skild AI each cleared $1B.

7 Robotics Startups to Watch Right Now (Inc. Magazine)
Nimble Robotics (FedEx, unicorn), Standard Bots ($1B, U.S. Army + Lockheed Martin), and the first-ever UL safety cert for an autonomous public-environment robot.

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