Hey, it's Greg

This week's guest spent nearly two decades running manufacturing plants before deciding the entire model for how factories adopt robots needed to change. His approach: ship the robot in a box, charge by the hour, and make the software simple enough that the person already on the shop floor can run it. The conversation is below.

What's the biggest thing keeping your shop floor from automating faster? Hit reply. I get back to every one.

In this week's edition:

I sat down with Matt Bush, CEO and co-founder of Hirebotics, for a conversation about what happens when you stop treating robots like capital equipment and start treating them like temps.

Matt ran manufacturing plants for close to 20 years. He deployed some of the earliest collaborative robots on production lines, including one nicknamed "Waldo" that moved between jobs throughout a Tennessee factory. That experience taught him that the real barrier to automation has never been the technology. The barrier is the business model and the complexity surrounding it.

At Hirebotics, Matt and his team built Beacon, a unified software platform that gives manufacturers the same interface across robotic welding, plasma cutting, painting, and other applications, regardless of the underlying robot hardware. Combined with a robotics-as-a-service model (no upfront capital, limited commitment), the goal is to make automation accessible to the small and mid-size manufacturers who need it most.

A few things that stood out:

• The labor math is getting worse. Decades of efforts to solve manufacturing labor shortages through education and recruiting have not been enough. Demographic changes are making automation increasingly unavoidable for manufacturers of all sizes.
• Robots changed employee attitudes when the framing changed. Workers at Matt's plants shifted once they realized robots were taking over repetitive, uncomfortable, and undesirable tasks rather than eliminating jobs. The robot became a tool, no different than a drill or a grinder.
• Beacon gives one interface across robot brands and applications. Welding, plasma cutting, liquid painting, and powder coating all run through the same platform. Manufacturers can manage entire fleets from a single system, with cloud-connected software updates deployed across every machine at once.
• "iPhone-esque" is the design target. Systems ship largely assembled, setup and programming friction are continuously removed, and an AI-powered support system now resolves roughly half of customer inquiries before a human steps in.
• Standardization compresses timelines. Robotic systems ship in days rather than the weeks or months traditionally associated with custom automation projects.
• Paint environments are an engineering challenge. Deploying robots inside potentially explosive paint booths requires intrinsically safe electronics, air-purged robot arms, and specialized operator controls. Matt's team built the capability because customers kept asking for it.
• Engineers work the trade shows. The company sends its engineers to interact directly with operators and observe real-world usage so that product decisions are shaped by the people actually using the tools.

Worth the full listen if you are building, deploying, or investing in industrial automation.

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

Photonics Scientist | El Segundo, CA

A well-funded, early-stage hardware company building the manufacturing layer for a new class of photonic sensing devices. You will own the optical and photonic architecture of electro-optical sensing systems from first-principles analysis through prototype demonstration, with access to in-house nanofabrication and optical test infrastructure. Ph.D. in Physics, Optics, or related field plus 5+ years R&D experience. ITAR: U.S. person required.

Industrial Hardware Design Engineer | Middleton, MA

A global industrial automation company building advanced robotic systems for customers across manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing. Hands-on role at their Robotics Hub north of Boston, designing and implementing hardware for complex industrial machinery. You will prototype, build, and test in the lab with real systems.

Integration & Test Engineer, Effector Systems | El Segundo, CA

A rapidly growing defense technology company building advanced effector systems for real-world deployment. You will validate systems coming off the production line, working directly with test equipment and automated test pipelines. An early hire with significant ownership of the I&T function.

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

Mach Industries raises $600M, doubles valuation to $3.7B in three months (TechCrunch)

The defense tech company founded by Ethan Thornton extended its Series C just three months after closing the initial $300M tranche. Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, Bedrock Capital, and Infinite Capital all returned. Mach builds autonomous aircraft, long-range strike platforms, and counter-UAS systems, and is scaling its own manufacturing with a 115,000-square-foot facility and roughly 350 employees. When a two-year-old defense company doubles its valuation to $3.7 billion that quickly, it tells you something about where capital sees urgency in the industrial base.

FANUC and Google launch the AI Welding Agent (FANUC)

FANUC and Google Cloud built a system that reads an engineering drawing with the camera on a CRX teach pendant, uses Gemini Enterprise to understand the materials and geometry, and automatically generates welding parameters plus a robot motion program. Zero setup, zero teaching. Shipments start by end of December, with a public demo at Tokyo's International Welding Show beginning September 16. Physical AI moving from concept to shipping product on the factory floor.

Stoke Space raises $1B Series E at roughly $10B valuation (GeekWire)

The Kent, Washington rocket company closed a billion-dollar Series E co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, bringing total capital raised to $2.3 billion. Stoke is building a fully reusable two-stage launch vehicle where both stages return and fly again. Nova Pathfinder targets early 2027 for its first orbital launch. A larger Nova Block 2 with 15-ton-class payload capacity is already under development. Hard tech at scale.

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