22Astronauts

22Astronauts with Ilir Aliu

The world was built by people not different from you. We interview founders, operators and engineers, to show you they're just like you. Hosted by Ilir Aliu.

  1. 4d ago

    Ep 114 | Why We Build the Whole Robot Stack Ourselves (w/ Neil Nie, CEO Verne Robotics)

    With Neil Nie, Co-founder & CEO of Verne Robotics. Neil came to the US as a kid and grew up in a small town in rural Massachusetts, writing software mostly on his own. As a high school runner he built a workout tracking app for his coach when the first Apple Watch came out, and with a friend he built a self-driving golf cart. He went on to do robot learning research with Shuran Song at Columbia and with Jiajun Wu in Stanford's SVL, spent about a year on Apple's fitness tracking team, and left his PhD at Berkeley to start Verne in summer 2025 with a friend from high school. "If you have an arm that can only carry three or four kilograms, certain applications, especially in industrial settings, are simply not going to make sense." Verne builds dual-arm mobile robots for manufacturing and logistics and owns the whole stack, from pre-training and post-training to the controllers on the robot. Customers today range from semiconductor supply chains to packing operations for contractors serving the US defense industry. In this episode, Neil and Ilir talk about his mother's advice to turn down an Apple salary after college, why research still matters when AI can answer most questions, how Verne got into YC without a single customer, why he thinks industrial robots don't need legs, and why he wants customers to build on Verne's robots the way developers built on the App Store. 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑 This podcast is brought to you by CoreWeave⁩ providing the specialized cloud infrastructure that powers physical AI and large-scale model training. Verne Robotics: https://vernerobotics.com Neil Nie on X: https://x.com/neil_nie_ Neil Nie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilnie Ilir on X: https://x.com/IlirAliu_ Ilir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilir-aliu 22Astronauts: https://22astronauts.vc/ Hosted by Ilir Aliu 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 0:00 What Verne Robotics builds 2:54 First-generation immigrant with entrepreneurial parents 3:43 Building a self-driving golf cart in high school 4:06 Columbia with Shuran Song, Stanford with Jiajun Wu 6:57 A workout app for his track coach 8:29 A year on Apple's fitness team 10:04 Alone in rural New England, then the robotics club 13:00 Should you still do a PhD when AI does research? 14:50 "Back then robotics just didn't work at all" 15:45 His mom's advice: skip the Cupertino salary 18:42 There are no shortcuts 23:03 Starting Verne and dropping out of the PhD 23:47 Why the company is named after Jules Verne 26:01 Robots that help businesses make and ship more 28:21 Selling into manufacturing as a first-time founder 30:58 Getting into YC with zero customers 33:20 The Pareto frontier of what robots should do 34:16 Windows XP vs. the App Store: customers as robot developers 38:14 The questions critics ask: vertical integration, deployment, form factor 41:54 Why legs are optional and payload is not 43:17 Design and public perception 45:00 What's coming next

  2. Nov 2

    Ep 113 | Why Robotics Needs Physical Benchmarks, Not Simulation (w/ Ali Ansari, CEO Micro1)

    In Ep #113 of 22Astronauts, Ilir Aliu sits down with Ali Ansari, Founder & CEO of ⁨Micro1. Robotics teams still struggle to say which policy model is better, because almost nobody evaluates them on the same real hardware. Ali’s view is that measurement comes first and improvement follows. micro1 builds expert-generated training data and evaluations for most frontier AI labs, and by Ali’s account robotics is already above $100M of its run rate. Ali was born in Iran, moved to the US at ten after his family won the green card lottery, and studied CS and math at Berkeley before a short stint at Stanford. micro1 began as an AI interviewer he built to screen engineers for his own software agency and is now valued at $4B. “If you can precisely measure intelligence, you by definition have a reward model to train on.” In this episode, Ali and Ilir cover why robot models will learn from human actions the way LLMs learned from human text, how micro1 collected 100,000+ hours of egocentric household video, and why cheap hardware with heavy annotation scales better than expensive sensors. They also get into the new Malibu lab for safety evals on real arms and humanoids, how micro1 serves competing labs at the same time, and what Ali learned from the sacrifices his parents made. 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑 This podcast is brought to you by ⁨@CoreWeaveYT⁩ providing the specialized cloud infrastructure that powers physical AI and large-scale model training. micro1: https://www.micro1.ai Ali Ansari on X: https://x.com/aliansarinik Ilir on X: https://x.com/IlirAliu_ Ilir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilir-aliu 22Astronauts: https://22astronauts.vc/ Hosted by Ilir Aliu TIMESTAMPS 0:00 What micro1 does and who Ali is 2:00 Born in Iran and winning the green card lottery 5:00 What the move cost his parents 9:40 Raising $100M+ at 25 and staying capital efficient 13:35 Why experts outside San Francisco change how people see AI 16:50 The two theses behind micro1’s move into robotics 21:40 From AI recruiter to training data for frontier labs 25:40 Synthetic vs. human data: simple hardware, heavy annotation 27:50 Why robotics needs physical benchmarks, not simulation 30:15 Inside the Malibu lab: safety evals and post-training 31:35 Serving competing labs without leaking information 34:00 Hiring, risk appetite and a role that changes every month 37:00 Mentors: Sean Rad and Joshua Browder 38:50 The Sunday reflection hour

  3. Oct 15

    Ep 112 | Why 99% Reliability Means Your Robotics Fleet Fails (w/ Joe Harris, CEO Alloy Robotics)

    In Ep #112 of 22Astronauts, Ilir Aliu sits down with Joe Harris, Founder & CEO of Alloy Robotics. Before starting Alloy, Joe helped scale a consumer telehealth platform to a $1B+ acquisition. Now, he is bringing those high-growth scaling principles to physical AI. "Reliability is measured at the action level. If every action is 99% accurate and you multiply that across 10,000 actions a day, your robot's actual uptime degrades incredibly fast." Alloy Robotics builds the "AI Robotics Engineer", a specialized data and agent platform that ingests robot logs, telemetry, and sensor streams to automatically detect, diagnose, and resolve field failures. In this episode, Joe and Ilir break down why general-purpose robotics hype collides with real-world fleet engineering, why hardware teams need SRE and agentic tooling, and how software remains the highest-leverage layer in robotics. 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑 This podcast is brought to you by ‪ ⁨@CoreWeaveYT⁩ providing the specialized cloud infrastructure that powers physical AI and large-scale model training. Follow Joe Harris on X: https://x.com/_joe_harris_ Alloy Robotics: https://www.usealloy.ai/ 22Astronauts: https://22astronauts.vc/ Hosted by Ilir Aliu TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Building the First AI Robotics Engineer (04:05) Don't Sell a Platform, Sell a Solution (09:38) Lessons from Scaling a $1B+ Business (14:38) Scar Tissue vs. Intellectual Learning (20:40) Why Hardware Needs SRE & Agentic Tooling (27:58) How Platform Shifts Expand Total Market Cap (34:25) The Hidden Cost of Robotics Log Data (41:10) Global Supply Chains & Re-Industrialization (51:12) The Compound Math of 99.999% Fleet Reliability

  4. Oct 8

    Ep 111 | Customers Don't Want Cooking Robots, They Want Assembly (w/ Rajat Bhageria, Chef Robotics)

    Rajat Bhageria is the Founder & CEO of Chef Robotics (San Francisco, CA), the leading physical AI company deploying AI-guided robot arms across food manufacturing and production facilities. Instead of chasing restaurant cooking hype or $15/hr fast-casual makelines, Chef Robotics pivoted to high-volume food factories (including Amy's Kitchen, Chef Bombay, Gate Gourmet, and Sunbasket), recently surpassing 100M+ servings deployed in production across the US, Canada, and Europe. After studying economics at Wharton and robotics at Penn's GRASP Lab, Rajat sold his first computer vision startup (ThirdEye) at age 20, co-founded pre-seed fund Prototype Capital, and launched Chef Robotics in 2019. Backed by $65M+ in funding (from Kleiner Perkins, Avataar Ventures, Construct Capital, and SVB), Chef Robotics uses real-world production data to build domain-specific Food Foundation Models (FFM) and world models for deformable material handling. 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑This podcast is brought to you by  CoreWeave  providing the specialized cloud infrastructure that powers physical AI and large-scale model training. Chef Robotics: https://chefrobotics.ai Rajat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajatbhageria/ Ilir on X: https://x.com/IlirAliu_ Ilir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilir-aliu/ Timestamps: 0:00 Why Chef Robotics walked away from restaurant deals to focus on food factories 3:39 Growing up in Cincinnati: Reading biographies of Carnegie, Rockefeller & Edison 8:33 Building computer vision for the visually impaired (ThirdEye) at Penn 12:35 Basic research vs. Product execution: Why shipping matters 15:14 Why cooking robots fail: "Customers don't want cooking robots, they want assembly" 18:05 Expanding beyond prepared meals: Airline catering, meatpacking, and CPG kitting 22:04 Selling before building: Raising seed capital from Kleiner Perkins 25:34 Why every founder's primary job is persuasion and sales 33:23 The "Value Investing" approach in robotics: Finding high-volume factory assembly 36:08 Specialists vs. Humanoids: Why industrial plants need "Home Depot, not Costco" 41:34 Learning from the 2015 robotics graveyard: Why ROI trumps generalizability 46:28 Real-world production data vs. simulation: The Food Foundation Model 52:52 The Goal & Bottleneck Theory: Focusing strictly on operational constraints 59:20 Advice to my younger self: Category creation takes time

  5. Sep 24

    Ep 110 | Your Factory Data Is Lying to You (w/ Silviu Homoceanu, CTO Almetra)

    Almetra is turning the perception stack from self-driving cars into factory intelligence. I sat down with Silviu Homoceanu, Co-Founder & CTO of Almetra, to talk about growing up with computers in post-communist Romania, eight years inside VW's self-driving programme, and why the data most factories run on doesn't describe what actually happens on the line. Silviu learned programming by translating English menus on his father's work PC, was selling self-built accounting software at 15, and came to Germany for a PhD in machine learning. He joined VW Group Research in 2014 and spent the next eight years on perception for autonomous driving, before a question from a manufacturing colleague sent him into factories for seven months. Today, Almetra (formerly Deltia) combines computer vision, sensors and machine data to show how production actually runs instead of how it was planned. The company raised a $19M Series A led by blisce/ in June 2026 and is opening an office in Boston. We cover why factory data is often wrong, what happens when the MES reports a reality that isn't real, the 100% defect detection problem, why so many robotics startups get stuck in pilot purgatory, what reliability really means on a running line, and Almetra's move from measuring manual work to automating parts of it. Silviu Homoceanu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silviu-homoceanu-893b7a5 Almetra: https://www.almetra.ai/ 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑 - CoreWeave — The Essential Cloud for AI. CoreWeave sponsors this podcast. Join CoreWeave at #FullyConnected: https://coreweave.com/fully-connected-2026/agenda 👉 Free code: FCLR26 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00 Meeting at the AI Campus in Berlin 00:47 Who Silviu is and what Almetra does 02:44 Romania after 1989 and his father's first PC 06:08 A 286 at home, MS-DOS, then Linux 08:04 Running a computer business at 15 10:21 High school nights in the computer lab 14:44 The mentor who said: study abroad 16:15 Flipping burgers to see the MIT campus 18:58 Romania vs Germany: theory against practice 20:23 First job: cluster computing for bridge simulations 26:20 Why computer networks stopped being enough 28:00 The exam answer that led to a PhD offer 30:47 Percentages or factors: how he picks problems 36:20 VW Research comes knocking in 2014 39:05 The meeting with manufacturing that changed everything 39:52 Seven months in factories: the data is wrong 40:30 Merantix, meeting Max, and founding the company 42:08 The Goal, bottlenecks, and life on a shop floor 43:31 The 100% defect detection problem 46:14 When the MES reports a reality that isn't real 48:09 Automating stations and the robotics angle 49:33 99.999% and why factories say no to startups 52:47 What is actually automatable today 55:07 The Series A, blisce/, and the move to Boston 59:21 Closing Follow 22Astronauts: Newsletter: 22astronauts.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/22astronauts Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_22astronauts_/

  6. Sep 16

    Ep 109 | Inside Almond: The $8,999 Physical AI Robot (w/ Saba Khalilnaji)

    Almond is building robots for the era of physical AI. I sat down with Saba Khalilnaji, Founder & CEO of Almond, inside the company's San Francisco factory to talk about building robots, scaling hardware, factory automation, and why Almond wants to become "America's robot factory." Saba started building robots as a kid, later spent nearly seven years at DoorDash, and eventually left to work on one of the hardest problems in automation: getting robots to operate reliably in factories where the environment and tasks constantly change. Today, Almond is building Axol, a dual-arm robot designed for physical AI, data collection, teleoperation and real-world deployment. We cover why traditional automation struggles in high-mix manufacturing, what Saba learned from DoorDash, the rise of "neo-integrators," why deployments are Almond's North Star, manufacturing robots in San Francisco, and Almond's work on teaching Axol to help build Axol. Saba Khalilnaji: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saba-khalilnaji/ Almond: https://www.almond.bot/ 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑 • CoreWeave — The Essential Cloud for AI. Join CoreWeave at Fully Connected in San Francisco, bringing together the people building the next generation of AI infrastructure and applications. Learn more: https://www.coreweave.com/fully-connected-2026 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00 Inside Almond's San Francisco robot factory 01:02 A first look at Axol 02:12 Building robots as a kid 07:50 Science Olympiad and early robotics 11:56 Studying bioengineering at Berkeley 14:58 From robotics to DoorDash 18:19 What DoorDash taught Saba about moving fast 22:37 Why he left to start a company 25:10 How your environment shapes ambition 29:28 Discovering the automation problem inside factories 31:06 Why traditional factory automation struggles 34:49 What Almond is building 36:03 The rise of the "neo-integrator" 38:36 Why deployments are Almond's North Star 40:17 Building America's robot factory 43:09 Why Almond believes in owning the full stack 44:05 Teaching Axol to help build Axol 46:09 Saba's advice to his younger self 47:25 Why it's called Almond 49:25 Closing Follow 22Astronauts: Newsletter: 22astronauts.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/22astronauts Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_22astronauts_/

  7. Sep 10

    Ep 108 | AI Is Inventing Hardware Humans Can't Design (w/ Prof. Mario Krenn, Feyer)

    Prof. Mario Krenn is the Scientific Director & Co-Founder of Feyer GmbH and Professor for Machine Learning in Science at the University of Tübingen, where he leads the Artificial Scientist Lab. For over a decade, Mario’s research has focused on using AI not just to analyze physics data, but at a conceptual level; building AI explorers that discover completely novel experimental setups, optics, and quantum hardware. In July 2026, alongside CEO Jonathan Klimesch and CTO Sören Arlt, he co-founded Feyer GmbH: a frontier AI lab for automated physical invention. As one of only 10 European teams selected for SPRIND's €125M Next Frontier AI Challenge (€3M non-dilutive seed phase), Feyer couples neural explorers with ultra-fast, differentiable physics simulators. Their mission is to autonomously invent next-generation industrial hardware (from advanced microscopy and lasers to lithography and quantum sensors) scaling Europe's high-tech manufacturing strengths. Feyer GmbH: https://feyer.ai Mario Krenn: https://mariokrenn.wordpress.com Ilir on X: https://x.com/IlirAliu_ Ilir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilir-aliu/ Timestamps: 0:00 "AI that invents industrial hardware": What is Feyer GmbH? 3:08 How the Cyber Valley ecosystem turned an academic researcher into a founder 5:43 Growing up in Austria: Programming operating systems at age 10 11:31 Stephen Hawking, mysteries of space, and choosing physics over engineering 15:01 Joining Anton Zeilinger's lab in Vienna: "What is the next to the next step?" 18:33 March 2014: Writing a program to design a quantum experiment humans couldn't solve 21:58 Finding solution.txt & the realization that computers can be creatively scientific 28:28 Moving to Toronto & Vector Institute: Learning AI material discovery from Alán Aspuru-Guzik 34:49 Returning to Europe & building the Artificial Scientist Lab in Erlangen & Tübingen 37:47 Asking questions to the universe: Why physics experiments are fundamental 43:35 Breaking resolution limits in microscopy & applying AI to industrial high-tech 45:49 Winning SPRIND's Next Frontier AI Challenge & founding Feyer GmbH 47:25 Scaling European hardware strengths: Semiconductor, photonics, and optics leadership.

  8. Sep 3

    Ep 107 | "We Don't Retrain Models, We Teach Them Cause & Effect" (w/ Johannes Haux)

    Johannes Haux is the Co-Founder & CEO of kausable (Heidelberg, Germany), a deep-tech AI startup building reasoning-first causal foundation models. Instead of memorizing internet-scale text patterns or relying on millions of trial-and-error attempts, kausable’s models (based on the Prior-data Fitted Network / PFN approach) learn abstract cause-and-effect structures from synthetic data—enabling them to adapt to entirely new physical environments in-context from just a handful of examples. After working in computer vision under Prof. Björn Ommer at Heidelberg University (alongside the future Black Forest Labs founders) and serving as Head of AI at AskUI, Johannes co-founded kausable with Dr. Benjamin Herdeanu (CTO) and Gregor Ramien (COO). The company recently raised a €12M seed round led by UVC Partners and Entourage, backed by top-tier angels from OpenAI, DeepMind, Black Forest Labs, and Neura Robotics. kausable: https://kausable.ai Johannes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhaux/ Ilir on X: https://x.com/IlirAliu_ Ilir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilir-aliu/ Timestamps: 0:00 Building foundation models in the Cyber Valley deep-tech ecosystem 1:25 Working in Prof. Ommer’s lab & meeting the future Black Forest Labs team 3:48 Early startup lessons at Sysmagine & AskUI 4:09 Why internet-scale LLMs aren't enough for general-purpose physical intelligence 4:52 Discovering Prior-data Fitted Networks (PFNs) & founding kausable 7:00 "I was a bad student": Why structure and habits matter more than raw talent 12:19 Wanting to be a movie director before choosing physics at Heidelberg 18:37 Quitting academia right before COVID lockdowns & taking the entrepreneurial leap 27:38 Why community & ecosystem matter for European deep-tech startups 29:26 How humans actually learn vs. brute-force reinforcement learning in robotics 32:01 In-context learning: Adapting to distribution drift & new sensors without retraining 33:47 TipPFN & predicting critical transitions: Seizures, blackout risks, and physical dynamics 37:37 Michael Black's perspective: Why Europe is a strong launchpad for disruptive AI 41:37 Exploratory tech vs. concrete customer problems: Making the "faster horses" bet 47:17 Moving from a research lab to early design partners 50:36 "Don't fake it, but think big": Advice for European deep-tech founders

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About

The world was built by people not different from you. We interview founders, operators and engineers, to show you they're just like you. Hosted by Ilir Aliu.

Information

  • Creator
    22Astronauts with Ilir Aliu
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    114
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 22Astronauts with Ilir Aliu
  • Show Website
    22Astronauts

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