Apptronik Inc. co-founder and CEO Jeff Cardenas has a lot of things on the tip of his tongue as he walks among robotic prototypes and undisclosed projects at the startup's expansive North Austin office.
He's just not ready to dish all the details yet.
It would be hard to discern what exactly is coming for any novice just strolling though the mix of exoskeleton prototypes and humanoid devices being carefully soldered together by scientists and technicians tinkering away at scattered work stations.
But big news is coming soon, he says, pointing out a partially assembled bot, which is the cornerstone of its scalable and AI-driven robot with broad applications from warehouses to oil rigs.
The startup has worked on projects including an "Iron Man"-like suit for NASA to bolster human strength. And a major milestone was disclosed June 23, when the company announced a $14.6 million seed funding round with plenty of Austin DNA.
Still, we might have to wait a few weeks, months or even years to hear about Apptronik's ongoing and undisclosed use cases. But Cardenas said the company is working with some of the biggest businesses in the world and he stacks Apptronik's robotics tech up against any competitor's, including Boston Dynamics, which has become a bit of a viral sensation through its videos depicting its bots' capabilities.
"People were afraid of what computers were going to do coming in," he said. "And now you can't imagine doing your job without holding an iPhone. And the same thing will be true for robotics in the future."
Apptronik's seed round came from Austin-based Capital Factory, as well as Grit Ventures, which has an office in Austin, and Dallas-based Perot Jain LP.
The new funding will help Apptronik bring its most versatile humanoid bots beyond partnerships and prototypes and into broader applications, Cardenas said. He sees his company's emerging robotics as akin to early computers, which at first had specific use cases and went on to have broad applications, just like how smartphones have become a utility for everything from recording this story to taking photos.
"If you're going to build sort of this iPhone, having it shaped like a human is really useful — it can use all the same tools," he said.
Apptronik has also received funding in the past from the National Science Foundation and Army Futures Command.
Apptronik has around 50 employees currently, and it plans to hire roughly 50 more by 2023. It has already posted a broad array of job openings online, ranging from extremely technical cross-disciplinary positions to roles in finance and operations.
The company spun out from the University of Texas in 2016, and is a hallmark of the university's relatively new cross-disciplinary approach at the Human Centered Robotics Laboratory. Its co-founders include Luis Sentis, Nick Paine and Bill Helmsing.
Cardenas said Apptronik's connections with UT help give the company a pipeline of people with multidisciplinary talent. But competition for robotics experts is still particularly fierce, with players including Tesla, Ford Motor Company's autonomous taxi project and Agility Robotics, Inc. and its humanoid bot pushing the boundaries of Ai and hardware.
"We have people coming to do robotics here from California or wherever it might be," he said. "So I think it's still early days. But I think Texas is a place where this is gonna happen."
Though officially unnamed, Apptronik's flagship robot is coming soon, with demos this summer. And that's just one of several products and applications it's working on with yet unnamed clients.
"We plan to deliver the first units of this system to customers in Q1 of next year," Cardenas said.
But, of course, he can't go into the details just yet.
