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Our featured guest on the show this week is Jamie Lee, managing partner at Tamarack Global. Tamarack Global emerged on our radar last month as one of the investors who participated in the recent Series B funding round for Figure AI.

After meeting Lee for research for those news stories, we invited him to come onto the podcast and share his investment thesis and the reasons why they are so bullish about humanoids, Figure AI, and especially founder and CEO Brett Adcock.

The heart of Tamarack’s investment philosophy centers around investing in strong leaders who hire strong teams and build solutions for very large markets. But you’ll also learn about Jamie’s pragmatic philosophy for evaluating proposals and some of the danger signals that he looks for when evaluating a potential investment.

News from the week

Viam raised $45 million in Series B funding

Viam has been quiet after all of the news last year, but Viam is building a modular, interoperable, and open-source software platform that works across all hardware and any fleet of machines. Viam stated that the funding will enable it to accelerate partnerships, drive commercial innovation, and further develop its platform.

Accenture announced an investment in Sanctuary AI

Sanctuary is building humanoids with embodied intelligence and they’ve always tightly focused on hand-eye coordination and manipulation over the bipedal walking aspects of humanoid robots. The investment in Sanctuary is the latest move by Accenture to build out a robotics strategy.

In January 2024, Accenture and Mujin created a joint venture to help bring robotics to the manufacturing and logistics industries. Called Accenture Alpha Automation, the new venture is owned 70% by Accenture and 30% by Mujin. The new company, called Accenture Alpha Automation, combines Mujin’s industrial robotics expertise with Accenture’s digital engineering and manufacturing service, Industry X.

Sanctuary has published a series of videos of its robots “doing stuff” on YouTube. These videos illustrate the development path of the two-armed humanoid as well as the AI behind the robots’ decision-making.

NYC takes steps to allow robotaxis in NYC

New York took its first steps towards allowing robotaxis this week and announced new safety requirements and permitting guidelines for companies looking to test their self-driving cars on public roads. 

Even with the city’s newfound interest in testing, autonomous vehicle (AV) commercialization in New York is difficult. It is one of the hardest cities for AVs to navigate due to its pedestrian-filled streets, unpredictable vehicle traffic, and sensor-disrupting bright lights.