Robotics, Physical AI & Konnex KOLpad Public Phase Live Launch

for the robotics world and starting AI in 2010, I believe. Lucas, you were correct me if I'm wrong, but the person who really does the change. Lucas, welcome to this. Hey, George, thanks for having me. Hi Vladimir, hi everyone. Yeah, I've been, I spent a lot of my career in robotics before it actually was cool. I started in 2010 building drones selling them all across the world. We were also the first one to put actually AI on the drones by getting the first Jetson board on a drone with two cameras overlaying to images and analyzing those images. And then after a deal of lots started Robo Valley in Europe, collaboration between research institutes, startup scene, and did Aman Valley test sites for all kinds of drones, the fly. And afterwards, yeah, we built large swarms of drones flying through the sky. And I advised and invested in a lot of AI companies back in the day when AI was not large language models. It was more analyzing imagery, training a system on images, helping systems detect damages in bridges, in wind turbine blades, et cetera. And back then, you had to tell a robot everything and you had to program everything. You need like a whole village of Vladimir to get a robot working, of course, that has changed. It's super exciting times now. So yeah, great to be here and George back to you. Sounds great, Jens. But today, I was thinking of doing something much more simpler than just a regular ME. I don't want to introduce Connicks as just another project coming up, but I actually want to come to the ground and I want to do this ME more about meaningful parts. For my community as my day, I part my community cares about, first of all, once my day, I partners with someone that someone should be not just a, let's say delicately, web three projects with manipulation part of it, but it should be a real data backed, some type of infrastructure project, which brings benefits to the users and brings benefits to my audience, to the audience that might participate in your campaign. Therefore, after the short introduction of the speakers, I just want to ask my audience to drop a couple comments, drop a like if we and drop a couple questions, which we would love to pick up during this ME session just to make it more meaningful. Because for my stance, I'm not the speaker, I'm not the public speaker, so all that matters to me is whether my people, my KELS, should join their own or not. So yeah, the audience drop a like and drop a comment if you feel like you have a question for two. By the way, I just saw from my marketer guy, there isn't discord. We're doing some kind of game with some prizes, I'm not sure what the pool is, but probably it's worth it. And you guys stay till the end of the ME session to get the price or something. Therefore, at some point, we'll just do a snapshot of all listeners and we'll randomly choose the winners other than the comment winners. So please stay, stay hooked. I'll be staying during the whole ME session as you guys, so yeah, it's for both of us. But let's get to the business. First question, I want to zoom out a little bit first. Everyone speaks about AI agents today, but you guys are betting on the physical AI and robotics. Why not go to the regular AI? And why do you believe that robotics is reaching an inflection point right now? Why robotics and not just any AI products? I would ask Lucas because you have the background of both AI and robotics. Yeah, thanks. So basically, what has happened is that robots have been getting a brain thanks to AI, right? And the cost of hardware has gone down to major developments in both fields, right? So I don't know if you've seen it today. You need three, one of the Chinese companies that's making humanoid robots. They had their subscription today 8,000 times over-scribed for their IPO. I mean, people really dig robotics at the moment because they see all the possibilities. You see it from all different sites. You see major developments in China, but you also see in the US, you see Elon betting on his optimist robots. You see Silicon Valley's full robots. Where it used to be very difficult to program robots, and you had to every movement of every arm you had to program, we're now with the world models give robots a sense of what the capabilities are. So we give robots a sense of the world so that we can actually train them way more easy for real life examples. And even if AI is not playing a role, now a day you can see, for example, I don't know if you've seen it in San Francisco, with towel robotics released their cleaning surface. For $30 an hour, they send a robot to your house. Currently, those robots are not running on their own brain. They're still controlled from a distance, but they're cleaning houses at $30 an hour. And you think, wow, that's, you know, might be expensive. But in San Francisco, the general price for one hour of cleaning is between $100 and $200. So you see both on the hardware site and on the AI site, the world model site, so many developments that, you know, these are super exciting times. And that's also why, you know, this is also the reason why I got involved with Connex is that, you know, the marketplace for this will become very important. And that's exactly what Connex steps into. And Vladimir will explain more about that later. But yeah, it's super exciting times. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to those times. And yeah, we want to play a large part in that. More right. Everyone is also guessing that there is, there are predictions. I have seen so many prediction markets right now on whether robotics will evolve or whether AI will take over or whether it's just a defy trend like we had in 2020. So in the European, what is the crossing point of robotics right now like where the robotics and AI will be moving towards and what is the forecast for that industry? Yeah, the forecast. Look, if you look at the VC man money allocated to robotics, and I'm not taking in the IPO of Unitry, but, you know, till mid June this year, already 18.8 billion VC money went into robotics. Yeah, that's already more than the whole of 2025. So you see an enormous influx in money flowing into robotics. Yeah, the robotics market is projected to reach 283 billion by 3032, about 2032. So yeah, we will see the, do you know, just an example of any VC from like Web 3 or just for the world that switched to robotics because I see the change, but I can't name one. Do you have one on the head? Everyone is looking at it, you know, from the big VCs from Silicon Valley like and recent or it's like everyone has stakes in it, right? Either it's through their Tesla shares or really specifically to robotic companies like figure AI and, you know, there is a big influx and what also helps, I don't know if you've seen, but Google's deep mind came out with Gemini robotics too, which is the first single AI policy controlling a full body. So, leg store so hands. I mean, there's so many things moving forward. I mean, BYD is coming out with their first humanoid robot. Like it's moving fast now. This is a train that doesn't stop. And, you know, if you can see the humanoid robots and it's not just humanoid robots, right? There's a lot of robots if you just look at robotic arms or they do a lot of work of pick and placement work. There's already a lot happening, but now it's accelerating like crazy. So, that's what I see and you see the people that all jump into this world like, yeah, they see the value in it and they see that we've crossed a bridge that is accelerating is, I mean, look, robotics has been around what since the 50s, 60s, but you know, a robot without a brain still needs a human to control it. So, with that brain, it has become, you know, useful. So, I see, I see big shift. All right. And I still work here, my friends. Alan Gares is listening, Leem in his listening, Ibra, other QLs are listening. So, for them, it might be very useful. When I look at projects in crypto, let's say, or Web2 projects, I usually look at different points. And like in crypto, I might see the backers, the technical background, the team, it's something that when you are looking at their robotics or AI project, which particular things, you are plaguing yourself as reading as like, you know, these are the criteria that you should meet to be able to call yourself a successful tier one robotics project. It could be backers, could be the team, I don't know, the technical. You got the audited Vladimir, we'll speak more about the audit, but you got our evidence. So, probably robotics that matters. So, what specific points that a robotics project should have to be able to call itself as a good one and to be able to attract people like you attract right now with a with a flourishing speed. Yeah, look, I always look at a couple of things that for me are very important. One is team. So, can the team build it and execute it? The second thing is, you know, show, and also this is also an entry or which thing, like, you know, build prototypes, show that what you are telling us is not just a marketing story, that it's actually a real product. Show me your first test, show me your first prototype. I mean, that's very important. Then, yes, I look at the market and I look at the chance of something becoming successful. Who are up against? How is your supply chain organized? How is your development organized? If you're not dependent on the supply chain. So, yeah, for me, those are the key drivers, I think, of a successful investment. That's how I look at it. And of course, yes, the total addressable market. But here with the robotics, that's a huge market. It does make sense. And at the same time, you mentioned an important thing. You mentioned a thing about the team and what problem the team solves. Like, basically, what the product they're doing and whether that fits the market, which is important. And here, I want to ask Vladimir because Vladimir, you're the one who deployed a single piece of code into GitHub. So, you probably know a thing or two about what problem context is solving, if it does. So, I'll be very skeptical about this. I will be very creative, but you have the room and you are the only person who can protect. So, what the problem context is solving right now? Could you just briefly explain what context does? Yeah, so, if I would explain the story to six years old sister, I would say that we create a system where people who make robots be smart get rewards for that work. I mean, researchers who develop VLA and a higher robotics AI models and users get the best service for their hardware. And also, we create a system where every action of the robot is verifiable. So, when we created the robot kitchen in Amsterdam, I had a chance to see by myself that you have a perfect software, but and you have very good VLA models in presentations of Nvidia on high