The Future of Humanoid Robotics with Andrew Kiguel, CEO at Realbotix

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to Andrew Kiguel, CEO at Realbotix, about the future of humanoid robots. Thank you to Fin for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about the number one AI agent for customer support, go to fin.ai/cto. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:24) The way that you caught my attention was I have a buddy named Jim Harris, super bright guy. He was at CES. We were talking about the AI girlfriend thing that happened at CES, the robots that were on display there. That clip got like 40,000 views on Instagram, was real popular.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:44) And I said, hey, let's go find the guy who's building these things and talk to him.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:00:48) Yeah, CES was bananas because that was the first time we ever displayed the robots. And I mean, you talked about your friend, but there were 4 billion, with a B, media impressions in the month of January from CES, things going viral. And it got to the point where the CES organizers would come to me several times a day angry because our neighbors were complaining because the people were encroaching on their booths to look at our booth, and they said we were blocking fire exits and creating fire hazards. So CES was a good coming out party for us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:34) Yeah, sounds like it. And so what did you, for people that didn't get to see it and they weren't there, what did you actually display at CES?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:01:41) So at CES, we had two full-sized robots and then two robotic busts. The robotic busts had vision systems, so you could actually see what the robot was seeing. And then the two full-size robots were AI-enabled. And so people could walk up and have conversations with them in any language, ask any questions. And so, yeah, there was just big lineups of people coming in wanting to have conversations with robots and great content for social media.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:16) Mhmm. Oh, yeah. And I've been following this for a little bit. Like, of course, I watch Optimus and then Figure, and they seem to be focused more on their deploying inside of industrial settings first, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:30) And if you can correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not an expert in this area. I'm just a fan. So I see them deploying in the industrial area first, but you seem to be focused somewhere else. Tell me about that.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:02:43) Yeah. We've taken a completely different vision to robotics than, I think, anybody else that I am aware of. So whereas, like, you know, Optimus and the stuff from Figure AI and Boston Dynamics has more of a physical purpose to it, like physical tasks replacing human labor in some form. We've thought about this very differently to say, what if robots are used for social interaction, emotional capital in a sense? So that is companionship.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:03:17) There is, I'm sure you're aware, there's a loneliness epidemic, not just in the US, but all over the world. Now, I see this stuff online and people are like, well, why don't they just go on Tinder or go to the bar? That's not available to everybody. It's not necessarily that AI companionship and robots are providing an advantage to a traditional relationship. But what if the traditional relationship is not available to you because you are in trauma as a kid? You don't have confidence. Maybe you have a disability. Maybe you live in a remote part of the world. And so what we're trying to do with that part of the business is offer an alternative to a traditional relationship.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:58) Well, absolutely. I mean, look, the, so I was looking into the adult, there's like some adult life-size robot type things out there. And I was just researching it because I've been looking into this. I would say at least I have a recurring event in my calendar, like, every year to just take a peek at where it's at. I've been doing this for ten years now because when I first saw that, I thought that's the future. Like, you see iRobot, you see Will Smith fifteen years ago or however long it was. And you're like, that's the future. It's coming.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:19) You see Westworld, you're like, it's coming. And so I'm keeping tabs on it annually because I believe that the relationship industry, for lack of a better term, is the one that's gonna be a huge driver of, like, people are gonna dump money into that. And I was researching and I found out that the largest purchasers of those, like, real doll things are actually parents buying it for like their disabled adult children. And that's a huge chunk.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:04:59) We just sold a robot to a family for an adult autistic man, and it was his family that purchased it for him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:10) Yep. Yeah. I think it wasn't like a hundred. It was like, I look, I'm pulling from like three years ago.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:05:16) I think—

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:16) It was like 20 something percent. It was enough for me to be like, oh my goodness. And it was enough to remember because this was, you know, seven or eight years ago. But my third child, our two-year-old has Down syndrome. And so, like, I started thinking about it again. I was like, look, if he's two, by the time he's 18, you don't know with the Down syndrome, like, how capable he will be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:36) We assume he's going to be very capable and treat him like that, and then we just deal with it as we go. But it's like that's a viable option. Just same way I think about my kids who are seven and five that they might not actually ever drive, you know? That makes a real possibility that within ten years, driverless cars are 90% of what happens.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:05:56) Right. Yeah. It's an interesting thought because, you know, and back to that, for a lot of people on the spectrum or who have challenges with traditional relationships, we're fulfilling a human need. You know, you go to the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and that human connection. The AI these days has become so good that it can replicate 90% of those kind of things that you could need from a human relationship.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:29) So where do you think the strategy is? I'm a little bit of a nerd. So there's like the hardware, and that's advancing independently. There's the wetware, essentially, like, the physical aspects of, like, there's hardware, and then there's the, uh, what do you call it? Like how do you refer to the skin and like the look?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:06:45) Uh, we call it the hardware.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:47) Oh, you call that the hardware too?

(Intro Narrator at 00:06:49) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:49) All right. So yeah, I would say there's like for me in my mind the way I see is like there's the underlying hardware, and then there's what I would call the wetware for lack of a better term, which is like the humanistic feel and look. Like the hardware for me would be like the skeleton, and then the skin would be like the wetware. And then there's the software, which is like the thoughts, you know. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:08) Like the AI models or whatever you're using. So there's these three fields independently advancing. Where do you think you have the greatest strength?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:07:21) It's a good question. I think our strength comes from our versatility. So number one, I believe we have the most realistic looking robots around, at least in North America that are AI powered. If you want to get a little more technical on it as to what makes them different is, we have a synthetic skin technology that feels and looks very real. It is incredibly hard to create a lip and mouth syncing technology that formats well with the words being spoken.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:08:00) And so it requires a lot of sort of these little micro motors in the face that can articulate what the words are. So if someone's kind of saying something funny, it's said like this, and it's not just a, you know, a flapping mouth.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:12) Mhmm.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:08:12) So that is something that we focus on in these facial emotions, and that's pretty rare amongst robot manufacturers. But last, we make the robots to be open source. And so when you buy a robot from us, you sort of get a menu that says, which AI do you want to integrate in? And it's, you know, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, a custom model, or our social AI. And that allows for a tremendous amount of versatility versus our peers who, like, you know, you buy and, again, I don't know.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:08:46) The Optimus robot is, you know, technically, it will be on sale at the end of next year for delivery in another two years. So I think we still have about four years before I have to worry about them as a competitor. But from what we've seen, you're gonna get a robot that's very metallic looking, and it's gonna have one personality and one look. We have a lot more flexibility and I think as a result, broader use cases.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:11) Well, absolutely. Plus, I mean, if you're focused on that realism, you can almost, we don't know what's gonna happen in four years or whatnot. But if you get really, really good at the relationship thing and the interaction and the humanist, like, realism of it, then when Figure and Optimus start rolling out, you could, it's like you could become like cell phone case company. Right. You know, you can adapt to them because they're definitely gonna build platforms and have stores on top of it.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:09:40) Yeah. For sure. And that's kind of how we're looking at it is the, you know, you'll be able to run various forms of software through our hardware. And also, like, I mean, let's look at the practicalities. If you look at Optimus and some of these robots, they're very metallic looking, and I don't know what their voices are gonna be, but it'll have probably some kind of a human monochromatic voice.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:10:02) If that was in front of a retail store and went, stop. I see you shoplifting. Like, it's almost a Robocop-like. It can be scary. Whereas if you see our robots, which are a little bit friendlier looking and, you know, could be wearing the clothing from that store and guide you around and also have a vision system that can alert security if there's theft going on.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:10:28) I think it just feels less of a draconian type future with these sort of imposing robots on you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:35) Have you watched the cocktail video of of the Optimus bots serving cocktails at a Tesla event?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:10:40) No. I haven't seen that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:41) You should. It's actually pretty fascinating. Yeah. They, I what type of accent did they have? But they it was interesting. It was weird. When I saw it, I was like, that's interesting. It's weird. They were making jokes, and it was pretty cool. But, again, they're putting zero effort on what I call the wetware.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:11:03) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:04) Here, Josh is something. Okay.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:11:05) I see this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:06) See what drink would you like? What are the options? I have a Robo Fun, and I have watermelon. Watermelon sounds great.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:11:18) Interesting. And that was at a Tesla event?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:23) I'm fairly certain.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:11:26) Okay. Well, listen. It's it's good. I mean, it looks robotic. It looks like they could actually even be a human behind there. And probably, there's a certain level of pre, being preprogrammed to be like, okay. This is gonna be behind the bar. Program it to do this and just this all night long. But, yeah, mostly they make good products for sure, but not as realistic looking as ours.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:51) Oh, no. They don't even try.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:11:53) They don't even try. They're not even trying, which is why I think, like, look, in the marketplace, if you go back and look at computers, like, in the fifties, sixties, you could walk into a room of computers and there was one company that made the transistor. Like, all the, you could, everything was really obvious and big and new and you could see it all.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:11) And then everything got compressed down real tiny. But throughout that, they each made advancements like the transistor company made advancements in the transistors. And then, you know, each one of those had like a market and a group of people competing to make the best version of that. You being in the market of the human market, I think, is a really smart idea because I haven't seen any other serious entrance. And if there are, you know, you can let me know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:38) We can cut out of the episode if you don't want to, like, shed light on your competitors. But I've been following this for a minute.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:12:43) There's two companies out there that are making, like, I think everybody sits in their own unique space, and so I don't view every company as having different strengths. The company, Hanson, that made the Sophia robot, if you remember, that was making its rounds about four years ago.

(Intro Narrator at 00:13:01) Mhmm.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:13:01) They've been quiet in the last few years. I don't know what's going on with them, but the Sophia robot was probably the first robot with facial expressions and social AI. And then the other one that's out there is Engineered Arts. And Engineered Arts makes a robot called, I think it's pronounced Ameca. It's sort of a gray looking robot.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:13:24) It's got very good facial expressions and a very good AI. So we've taken looks at those companies and what they're doing. They do some things very well. I think, you know, for us in terms of what we're doing, we're going for much more of a realism. You know, we're probably the only robot manufacturer that gets criticized for the manicures on the robots.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:13:51) You know? So, but those were, probably Engineered Arts and Hanson would probably be the two companies that are doing something most similar to us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:03) Yeah. Yeah. That I don't like the the gray look. It it looks like a weird avatar person, the Ameca robot.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:14:12) Yeah. It's kind of genderless.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:16) Right?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:14:17) But look. I gotta pay. They have good facial expressions, which is difficult to do, and it's a good AI from what we've seen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:26) Oh, nice.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:14:27) But when you buy it, I mean, one of the, and we can talk about this. When you buy the Sophia or the Ameca robot, that's the robot that you get. With our robots, because it's so easy for us to do this, we can customize the look. So you can say, I want it to be an old man. I want it to be a, what, like, you tell us.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:14:52) And with permission, we actually have been contacted by a religious group that wants us to build a robot of their leader. This is sort of a, they have like 80 million followers, not American. And they said, can we send you the dimensions? We said, better yet, you just go to a place you can do a 3D scan. You put your head in a box.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:15:15) It does sort of a 3D, 360 scan of your face, senses the dimensions, and we can create a mold out of your face so that the robot looks like that person.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:28) Little AI Jesus.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:15:29) And I don't know anybody else who's making custom robots. Right? So but that's exactly right. You can make an AI Jesus that could be loaded with the entire Bible, and you could go up to it and be like, I have a question. Does it, and you can, you can give it and it can give you an answer as if it was Jesus, you know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:49) Yeah. Which by the way, GPT has been really interesting in like Bible stuff. Like, for as far as me, like, asking questions and things like that, it's actually given me some really good answers. Answers better than I thought it would. That and Grok.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:16:07) Yeah. Yeah. I've been playing around with Grok lately, and I've enjoyed it. Now here's an interesting statistic, Joel. I don't know if this is true, but I was doing some research, and it said that the accuracy on fact checking for most of these AI programs is a lot lower than you think. Like, what do you think the accuracy would be on ChatGPT or or Grok?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:30) I think there's a direct correlation between the prompt and the accuracy you get. So yeah, because that's what I've learned. The better you get at prompting, the better results you get. But I would have no idea. You can just throw it out there.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:16:48) According to this, they vary. I think ChatGPT had the highest level of accuracy at around 65%.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:57) Mhmm.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:16:59) And this is just asking questions that were then fact checked. And so I think, you know, similar to when you find things on the Internet, I think we've gotten to a point where we just sort of accept anything that comes out of an AI program as being factually correct. But I guess the point of this is that's not necessarily true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:18) Well, I think the past ten years have taught us that facts are hard. Right? Like, we're evolving right now. We're experiencing the growing pains, Andrew, of evolving as a species, like, as a civilization.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:36) Where before, you know, you just roll back fifty years ago, whatever your parents told you was the truth. You know? I have a question, how did this happen? And they just give you an answer, and that's just how it works. And then you can still function, you know, and then you adapt as you go. But then we got, like, all of with the Internet, everything, like, pouring water on it. Like, it just went crazy because we're just, like, drowning in truth. This study comes out that proves this from this, you know, credentialed person. And then immediately, a thousand doctors signed this potential, you know, petition from this credentialed person. And it's like, okay. Well, who do I believe? You guys all have, like, Harvards and, you know, like, who do you believe? And so it becomes a difficult task. So I'm not surprised.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:18:23) Right. Yeah. See, there's some of the statistics, and I may have received some, see, there's another change of facts. But yeah. You know, it's true. The facts really change, and it's challenging even these days trying to find a proper diet. Because every time I think I'm eating properly, a new study comes out that says, nope. Shouldn't do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:42) I know. I know. It's gonna kill you. Every week, my wife's like, we're changing the equipment in the kitchen. Right. That Teflon coating's killing us. We got new water filters. You know, we're dying from this thing in the water. I'm like, alright. Alright. Like, you know?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:18:59) Yeah. Yeah. No. No. It, I often, you know, I'm in my mid fifties, and I often have conversations with my kids about, let me tell you about the olden days when there was no Internet, no computers, and these things were attached to the walls, and that's how you made phone calls.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:17) Oh, yes. I know. I feel so old now telling my kids, explaining to them that, hey. There was a time before we had broadband level Wi-Fi wherever we go in the car and everything.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:19:28) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:29) My dad would take a, like, a 13 inch DVD or VHS combo TV and then have a AC/DC converter because he was a nerd. He's an engineer. We'd AC/DC convert it, and then we would sit there and play tapes in the back of the car, like, when we went every year for, like, family road trip to Georgia for, like, ten hours. And that was, like, we were the most advanced. Our friends thought we were, like, the coolest kids in the world because they had to, like, read or look out the window, but we had this TV thing in the car.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:20:01) Well, it's incredible. I mean, Instagram news, but there was this chart that showed from, like, the eighties how people spend time. And it used to be, you know, the number one area that most people spend time with was with their family, and then it was, like, friends and school, church were sort of the top four. And then it sort of showed over time how these things move to today. The predominant way that people spend time is online. You know? And things like family, friends, church, all these things have really dropped down to be such small parts of our lives. Like, yeah, but you're right. We've been undergoing this dramatic change in how we interact with technology and with ourselves as a result of that now for probably the last twenty, thirty years, and it keeps getting more dramatic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:52) Real quick, thank you to Fin for sponsoring this episode. Fin is the number one AI agent for customer service with a 59% average resolution rate. Fin delivers high quality answers and resolves even the most complex customer queries. Fin is trusted by over 5,000 customer service leaders and top AI companies including Anthropic and Synthesia. Fin works on any help desk. You don't have to overhaul your current system to get the best AI agent for customer service. Priced at only 99¢ per resolution with a ninety day money back guarantee. If you're ready to transform your customer service experience, find out how at fin.ai/cto. Can I share a little side note about Sophia, and then Josh can choose if we wanna cut it out later?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:21:40) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:41) So we talked to them about doing an interview with Sophia. And two things that made it not happen. The first thing that made it not happen is they're in, I think, China or something. So I had to get up at 2AM to do it. I was like, I think it's cool, but I don't think it's that cool. I don't think it's 2AM cool. I have a good sleep schedule. Although with the kids, I might be up anyways. But so that was number one. And number two, it had to be perfectly scripted ahead of time. And I was like, I'm good. I'm done with that. But I just figured that might be, like, a little useful to you to know that that's one of the situations. Because I saw her on Jimmy Fallon and stuff. And I was like, oh, it's so cool. She can do an interview. And then they're like, it has to be scripted word for word. We have to pre-program the responses. We have to know exactly what you're gonna say. Like, nothing off. It was very strict. I was like, well, that doesn't sound fun.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:22:33) I can understand the appeal of that because you just don't know what's gonna come out of the AI's mouth. Right? So we did the first interview we did with Aria, which was unscripted, and it was on Fox. Okay? So a couple of funny stories. So it's on Fox, Liz Claman, famous interviewer. She's an anchor there. And I said to them before we started, I said, please tell her that the question, similar to what you said earlier, the prompt will lead to the most accurate answer. I said, make sure you ask the AI a direct question. It can't be like a muddled question with follow-ups. Please let her know that otherwise you're gonna have a strange interview. And the first question she asked is, like, a three, four minute run-on sentence with four questions in it and goes right to the robot. And, you know, I was like, please, you know, you're like, please, please come out with a good answer. And the answers were pretty good generally. But, yeah, you're taking that risk if it's not scripted.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:40) Yeah. It's creepy. My daughter's blonde hair, blue eyed, named Aria. So when I saw that, oh, yeah. So when I saw it, I was like, oh, well, it's weird. You know, because she's seven, and this is things like what? Like, 25 or something as far as, like, its look. Is that about right?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:23:57) Yeah. We've actually never, I mean, she's about 3.5 years old in robot years. But I think she's supposed to be sort of 25 to 30. We wanted her to be sort of an ideal of smart, interactive, engaging, and someone that you sort of do a double take on and be like, is that a human or is that a robot? And would sort of pull you over and have the conversations. They said at CES, she was one of the four robots there and for sure was the one that got the most attention.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:31) I've definitely seen girls that look like her, the ones that have, like, the filling in their lips. It's like, if you were to tell me that's a girl with Botox, I'd feel like, yeah. That checks out.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:24:42) Well, but so this is a constant debate between me and our designers. So, like, a lot of the guys that do this are artists. Like, there's a lot of artistry that goes into this. And, you know, there is a constant where I don't want to derail their creative aspirations, but I'm also like, build me someone that looks like the girl next door not like, you know, the girl at the club. Right. So but we have, by the way for the audience, we do have males as well that we build so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:14) Yeah. And they're all sorts of interesting faces. I like that old guy male one. That one, honestly, of all of them, I thought that one was the most realistic. The guy that had the wrinkles in his face and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Is that Hank?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:25:26) Yeah. He's actually got hair in his nose. He's very realistic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:30) I know what that's like. I thought that's, I bought a nose and ear trimmer. I was like, alright. I'm old. I'm getting there. Yeah. Can I buy one of these today? Like, if I wanted a Hank, could I buy a Hank today?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:25:42) Yeah. Yeah. You certainly can. We have three models. So to put things in perspective, we've not advertised yet. So we're getting, we're taking orders from inbounds, but we have three models. One is the bust. So call it from the shoulders up. And that model starts at $10,000. And, again, similar to what I said earlier, you buy it, you check off which AIs you want to be built into it, and then you receive it and you can use it and, you know, okay. I wanna use it for ChatGPT or I have a custom model or I wanna use the Realbotix model. Then we have the modular robot, which is more expensive. It's a full bodied robot. It does not move like it doesn't have mobile legs, but but here's why we built this and this is I think one of the best things our engineers came up with. We built the robot to be like Lego, so you can detach the torso, the legs, the arms, and the head, and pack it in a suitcase and travel with it. And the reason we came up with that is every time with the previous robots, people were like, can you bring it to New York? Can you bring it here? Can you bring it there? And we're like, well, it's gonna be hard to ship. You know, you gotta build a casket for it and pay the shipping charges. So why don't we just build a robot that comes apart and we can travel with it in our suitcase? So, that modular robot, we call that one the M1, can be pulled apart. It doesn't move around via its feet but everything else is robotic. The last model we have is the F1 or the full bodied. That one sits on a circular, you know the Roomba vacuums that are on wheels?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:29) Yeah. Yeah.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:27:31) It sits on one of those. It's a lithium battery. It's kinda heavy. That robot does not come apart, but it can move around your, you know, your house, or your office or retail store. And that robot starts at 175.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:48) So, like, why not go bipedal?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:27:53) Yeah. Good question. Are you just waiting for the hardware to advance independently and then you're gonna slap your the wetware and the software on top of it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:03) Somewhat. So, that's what I would do. Yeah.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:28:05) We're not a billion dollar company. Like, we're a small publicly traded company. We don't have endless capital. We're not Tesla or Figure.ai. And so we, number one, we have to decide where are we gonna allocate our capital. Now the walking of a robot is a multibillion dollar problem that doesn't yet have a solution. And let me explain. Every time you see the robots generally walking, it's on a flat surface, and they do a real good job of kinda doing this across a flat surface. And whenever you see robots on rocky terrain or sandy or hills or a bunch of stairs, it's usually a four legged robot. But the truth is that apart from a very basic set of stairs in front of it, robots don't have the ability to sort of traverse all types of terrain. It just doesn't exist yet. I don't care what is out there and that's some pre-programmed scripted stuff. We're not even trying to tackle that. We'll wait for somebody else to get that out there, and then we'll copy it in three years. Where we're focused that the other companies can't touch us on is the facial expressions, and that's also very hard to do. So our robots can, you know, make any facial expression that a human can. And we'll focus on that area of difficulty because it aligns more with our vision of robots that look very human. Plus, you've seen Aria. If Aria was moving around like this, it would take away from the gracefulness of her sort of gait. We don't want that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:44) Yeah. I think specializing there in the facial expressions is a brilliant move.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:29:49) Thank you. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:50) Yeah. Because you're, I mean, like, look, the Boston Dynamics and the Teslas and all the Figures, they're going to figure out that, and then they're gonna wholesale them to all the people that wanna build stuff on top of them anyways.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:30:04) Yeah. So, and ironically, we've been getting some inbounds from some of the Chinese robot manufacturers, the large ones who want to explore using our robotic heads that look realistic on their robotic bodies.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:22) That makes sense. Is anyone buying them and actually using them as a girlfriend today?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:30:29) Not that I'm aware of.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:30) No? No. Okay. Interesting.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:30:33) The media loves that story. It's salacious. It's good clickbait. And after CES, we went, you know, we became globally Internet famous because of this you can buy a girlfriend narrative. But that's an oversimplification. The people who have been contacting us are hospitality firms, so hotels, casinos, amusement parks, museums, retail stores. Have had some sort of inquiries from hospitals and schools. I think I'm at a higher level, trying to figure out if that can be integrated. But that's been, I would say, 99% of the interest in our product has come from those areas.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:24) Oh, okay.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:31:24) And frankly, that's a better area. Like, I'd rather sell a hundred robots to a hotel where you have sort of a concierge. Imagine, Joel, you walk up and you're like, make me a reservation for dinner for four people at this time at this restaurant. I'd like some extra pillows in the room and book me a massage at this time. Robot's like, not a problem. We'll have that done for you, sir, and then it gets done. I'd rather have a hundred robots doing that than selling one robot to a guy who's like, you know, this might be at a higher price point for him and requires more attention. Now we'll take business from anyone, but ultimately, we have a business here. We wanna scale it. And I believe the enterprise sales are the better way to go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:08) Oh, I do. I do too. It's where the money is, and it's where the value is. It makes complete and total sense. Yeah.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:32:17) I'll give you a story. I'd like to hear if if this is something you would visit with with your kids. But we came up with this idea. So we were contacted by a firm a few weeks ago that had an AI of Suzanne Somers' personality. I don't know if you remember Suzanne Somers. Huge star in the eighties from Three's Company. And they had got permission from her widowed husband, Alan, to do this, and so we integrated in because we have a blonde blue eyed robot that was Suzanne Somers. We integrated in the AI with the robot and did an interview between her widowed husband and the robot with Suzanne Somers' voice and personality. It went over really well. It got picked up in US Weekly, Fox, New York Post. This was last week. But in talking to the guys, I said, you know, we can replicate the personalities of various celebrities, and they gave me a list. We have actually licenses for these, like, 20 different celebrities that are deceased. But imagine we created a museum with 30 of the most interesting people in history, and you could walk in and there's a likeness of that person as a robot, and you could say to them, maybe it's Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Jimi Hendrix, whoever.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:33:39) And you could go in there and have a full conversation with this person, ask them any question, and they'll respond to you accurately in that person's voice and with their mannerisms. I think that'd be a very cool museum to take your kids to.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:53) Well, you already have the existing infrastructure. All you need to do is call the wax museums and have them buy the first unit, and then eventually, it'll do well, and then they'll replace all their waxes with these. I mean, that sounds like a no-brainer to me. I'm not a wax museum type person, but I don't consume a lot of products out there in the world. But they're huge. It's a big space. I see wax museums every time I go to a town and there's always people doing it, so they're obviously in business and happening. I would think that if I was a wax museum, that would be like I'm a horse rental company. I should start renting cars, right? You know, it's like get on board with the future because I honestly, I would go. Like, right now, I would not pay to go to a wax museum. But if a wax museum had a talking thing, I would go see it once. I'd definitely go check it out.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:34:46) I have found that a bunch of things I didn't think I would want to do, my three-year-old will drag me into doing. So he walks by a wax museum. He's like, I want to go. Then you're, you know, easier to do it than not. But yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:03) Yeah. Luckily, those bouncing trampolines were across from the wax museum, so my kids went there. I've learned something today, Andrew, and it's definitely that the robot girlfriend thing is on the back burner. I really like the hospitality play, the interaction. You know, I'd say for people that are maybe like 20, I think they're going to get pretty used to this, you know, my personal device having its own AI on it and doing stuff. But that means we still have 40 years left of people that are going to be alive walking around who don't want to do this and who instead want to talk to a bust of a person, you know, want to talk to a concierge. So I think that it's still a really solid plan. Have you gotten inside of any of the resorts yet or anything like that?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:35:53) Not yet. We're still early stages. As I said earlier, the first time anybody ever saw our product was in January. So it's only been a few months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:04) Okay.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:36:05) And by the way, we're not ruling out that companionship angle. Our robots do have the ability to be emotionally intimate should a person want that. It's just not the primary focus of the company going forward, at least not in the near term. Listen, if I had a billion dollars in the bank and could hire a bunch of people, that would certainly be its own division.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:32) Right. Right. How many—what's the size—you're publicly traded, so you can talk about this a little bit. What's the size of the company currently?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:36:39) So including me, it's about 20 people. So that includes myself, a CFO. We have some laborers that are building things, a bunch of engineers and devs doing the R&D and integrating things in as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:59) Are you physically in the same place, or is it all remote?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:37:02) It's a mix. So we manufacture the robots in Las Vegas, which is a great place to do that because there's so many conferences there and, you know, if you think about the potential markets with casinos. But some of the devs are remote. I'm remote, but I would say 15 out of the 20 people are in Las Vegas.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:26) Okay. Where are you at?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:37:27) I'm in Toronto.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:29) Oh, you're in Toronto? Okay. Cool.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:37:30) Yeah. For now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:31) For now.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:37:33) For now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:33) We won't hold that against you. Are you from Toronto?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:37:38) Not originally. I was born in Santiago, Chile, but I've been living here most of my life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:45) Okay. Cool. Cool. How long will it be until I can just buy a robot and you can't tell the difference between the robot and the human, and it can just join my family as a nanny or something of that nature? What are we talking about?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:38:01) I believe that from an AI perspective, we're there now or almost there. If you've ever played around with the various AI programs and it sounds like you have, it's getting pretty close to feeling human. It gets to the point sometimes where I'm playing around with our own AI, and I feel guilty. Like, you know, I've got to go for dinner. I'm like, I'm really sorry. I've got to go now. And then I sort of check myself. I'm like, I'm talking to a piece of software here. I don't need to feel bad for ending the conversation. So I do think we're really close on the AI front, if not there. On the hardware side, we're going to—I think we're really close on the appearance side. So if you look at our robots, unless you're looking at them from a distance to do a quick take, they may look human for a second, but once you get closer, you can see the skin's just a little bit too perfect and things. But I do believe that we're probably a few years away still from having a robot that moves in a way that doesn't have some of that robotic jerkiness. I think that's three to five years until we have that really nailed down. I've seen a lot of stuff on the internet. I've done some research. A lot of what you see on the internet is fake. I mean, it's animated or sped up or a guy in a speed skating suit dressed up as a robot. People will do all kinds of things to get clicks on the internet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:36) The Boston Dynamics one, though, with it break dancing. Did you see that one that came out like a month or two ago? That was pretty—

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:39:43) Yeah. I don't know if you pull that up, but at least we should—I mean, we can take a look at it. But something about that when I saw it seemed to me to be a little bit staged. Like, I don't know if that's going to be—and again, do we need robots to be breakdancing for us? But—

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:01) Yes. Yes, we do.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:40:01) Yes. We do. We do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:03) This is essential requirements, Andy.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:40:06) I'll tell you something that we are working on, which is pretty cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:11) Come on. That looks a little bit real.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:40:13) No, no. That's very good. But is this from Boston? I mean, I would just question this could also be animated, but I mean, it's very good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:21) Boston Dynamics.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:40:22) Yeah. There's no question. It's very good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:25) I know. This is their latest one, like brand new one. Like, when I saw it, it kind of creeped me out a little bit. That's weird.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:40:38) No, it's doing some cool stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:39) Thanks, Josh. Thank you.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:40:40) But that would—

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:41) Look, and they just imagine you putting the body on top of that, the layer on top of that with the expressions. I mean, that would just be gold, you know?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:40:50) Our synthetic skin is quite good. We've been contacted by some medical experts to see if they could test it as a skin substitute for burn victims, which is like a $5 billion business. And so there's all these little offshoots to building the robots that we're looking at. You know, our AI is going to be accessible not just in the hardware, but on your computer or on your phone if you're traveling and don't want to bring a robot with you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:20) Oh, I could leave the robot—I could leave my robot wife at home, but she's still on my phone. So it's just like real life.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:41:26) She's still on the case. She's still on your case. What are you doing now? Yes, absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:31) Oh, man. Just hook her into a live stream feed so I don't tell her. She just knows everything that's happening, you know?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:41:38) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:39) Oh, man. And then so let's talk about the future. So let's say that we've got this technology advancing, but then we also have the Neuralink type of technology advancing. How do you think those two things will come together?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:41:54) Yeah. Look, that's a really interesting question, and we've been talking to people steeped in that area to see, you know, how can we integrate some of that stuff in. I don't know. That's a scary area that I don't know. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:10) I want a group. I want five Joels, and I'm the leader of the Joels, and I'm controlling them with my brain. You know? It's like we're an organism. And I can just do more things. That's one possible future. Another possible future is the pairing. Like, if me and my wife both had the Neuralinks, then we both know what's going on in each other's lives, I guess. It's weird. It's creepy. But I'm not saying that I believe these things morally should happen. I am imagining potential futures, right? So you have to be careful with that because people sometimes I'll say stuff and they're like, that's not going to—I'm like, yeah. But I'm just imagining what could happen. I'm not saying that I want it to happen. I'm not saying I believe it should happen, you know?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:43:00) There's some potentially strange outcomes out of that. I don't know where I stand on it either, you know—

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:06) I don't want a Neuralink with my wife. I don't.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:43:10) Does she want one with you, though?

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:12) No, she doesn't. She doesn't want inside this head. This is craziness. This is chaos that goes on. No. I am going to be a Luddite in that sense. You know, this is why the beauty of human biology and the generations going forward happens. Like, let the next generation deal with that. I'm going to be a Luddite in the sense that I want an organic relationship. I just want to communicate. And so—

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:43:37) This is interesting. And I don't know if you can pull this up, but I think last week, somebody encoded a message in $1.5 million of Ethereum, basically saying that—I don't know if you can pull it, Blake—that the Chinese government had put a Neuralink into the people and were controlling their minds or something like that. And somehow this was transmitted on the blockchain last week.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:05) Sounds like an expensive conspiracy theory. Sounds pretty fun. Josh is going to see if he can research. So so just so I understand, Chinese—

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:44:14) 6,800,000.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:16) To warn against mass mind control. Okay. Well, look. I wouldn't be surprised. The Chinese model—

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:44:28) There's another one. So 1,300,000 system. There's money being spent here on this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:35) Well, look, I think that's a distinct advantage China has over the United States is because we switch our leaders every four years. They're ruled by a dynasty, essentially, that's been in place for hundreds, if not thousands of years, right? Like, they can just do what they want. And so the idea that they would be engineering humans or engineering mind-controlled devices and stuff in their population dwarfs ours, especially Canada's. Right? And so who knows what's going on over there?

(Intro Narrator at 00:45:03) Yeah. So maybe we should take it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:05) I have not. My sister lived there for three years, so I have some experience where, like, we would talk all the time and stuff. And she explained to me what it was like. The weirdest things from China from her experience were if the people protested in the streets, they just cut the power and water off to the block that was protesting.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:45:26) I've been there a lot. I've been there probably around 15 times.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:30) Okay. Wow.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:45:33) If you were to cut the country in half, every city on the east side—

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:38) Okay.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:45:39) Chongqing, all the—maybe Shenzhen? Yeah. I've been to all of those places. I used to do a lot of business. I actually have a map somewhere. But what I found interestingly different is because the government's got so much control there and say, we would go to the cities and the mayor of the city—like, to me here, you know, if I was to bump into the mayor of Toronto, I'd be like, okay, cool. They wield so much power and they have so much popularity there. They're treated almost like superheroes. And I always found that so neat. Like, you'd go for dinner and, you know, the key aspect of every visit was meeting the mayor of the town, and you'd have a lovely dinner together and talk, but there was so much reverence towards that leader of the city, which is something that I found so different compared to how we interact with leaders here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:32) It's because of the competition. It's because there's an election cycle, and there's going to be a new—you know, that's part of it.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:46:38) Part of it also, I think, has to do with the power that's wielded. So the mayor of the city can say, I will zone this for what you need or not. I will allow this. I will not allow that. So they have an extra amount of power than a North American politician might as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:56) Right. Because they're going to have to go fight whoever the head of the compliance department is or whoever the head of zoning is. Like, they're just not going to—it's not going to be orders handed down, you know?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:47:04) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:04) You know?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:47:05) Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, side conversation there. But yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:07) It's just interesting, though, right? Because there are different models out there, and they have pros and cons. And so I at least like to not ignore it. I like to talk about things that could be difficult to talk about, but in the best way possible. But back to your humanoid robot stuff, are we talking five years, 10 years? How long until I can buy a robot replacement wife?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:47:34) Well, you can buy one now. It just depends on—

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:36) And not know the difference. And not know the difference.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:47:40) I think we're probably a decade away from the tech. Five to 10 years would be my call.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:46) All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:47:49) You're really focused on this replacement robotic wife. She's not going to listen to this, is she? Josh, make sure you cut that part out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:59) And so to answer your question, Andrew, the reason why I'm so interested in the perfection of the robots and stuff in the timeline is because far before the perfection happens, our society will have changed drastically. All you need is the Optimus type robots being able to be purchased for $20, $30K, and it's just going to change humanity. You've seen I, Robot. It's just going to be fundamentally different. And I'm not scared of it. I would say I don't approach it necessarily with fear. I approach it with curiosity. Like, I'm interested to watch this take place. Right. I'm like a spectator, you know?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:48:40) I think Blade Runner is still a decade away.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:44) Okay. All right. But Terminator, though. Terminator is five years, right?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:48:49) Well, if he comes back from the future, then it could be tomorrow, right? So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:55) You're a cool guy. What do your kids think about the robots? What do they think daddy does, by the way?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:49:00) They think I'm in a shop manufacturing hands and noses and ears for robots.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:07) Okay.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:49:08) Yeah. So they know what I do. They're fascinated, and I think they think it's cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:15) And do you have girls and boys?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:49:18) Yes, I do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:19) Okay. Cool.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:49:20) The boys are far more interested than my daughter in the robots.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:25) Of course. Yeah. That tracks. Yeah. I've got one girl, two boys. And all of our siblings, they either have all girls or all boys. So it's hard for me to explain to my brother and my sisters-in-law and stuff what it's like to have boys and girls because it's different.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:49:44) Yeah. For sure. They're different.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:45) You get it, though. You get it. All right. Let's talk a little bit about leadership before we wrap up here, and thank you so much for doing this. But I am curious. You're building this company. It's a small publicly traded company. It's on the future. It's exactly what's happening in the world right now. From you as a leader and managing and helping organize the vision of these 20 people and accepting input from the marketplace and hospitality, what are you learning right now as far as working with people and leading them?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:50:16) So look, I mean, I'm in my mid-fifties. I've been working and leading people for a long time in my career, at least the last 20 years in various roles. The hardest part of any job is dealing with people. Trying to get people's strengths out and contain things that might not benefit everyone. That generally goes back to ego. Being an entrepreneur in this scenario is tough. I think I described it. It's like getting kicked between the legs often, but you have those periods of reward and gratification that come up as you continue to build. But I would say being an entrepreneur is like lots of small kicks down and then that one sort of great moment that elevates you higher. And you keep striving for those moments that get you there, and that might be via a breakthrough in the technology, a great sale, a great shout out. But generally, keeping people aligned and managing. I always say being a CEO is a little bit like maybe being the coach of a team where you have to organize all the players and help guide people in the right direction. But yeah, it's a challenge for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:38) Oh, I completely understand. I've built and sold three companies. Yeah. It's like you're just constantly getting punched, and it's like then something good happens. And one of the big shifts for me as an entrepreneur was realizing that when something good happens and you get on a high and there is that extra cash and resources, to rein it in instead of just being excited about it and pushing harder and forward, like reinforcing your scenario, saving, like reinforcing your ability to take punches in the future because it's seasonal. Right? So it's...

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:52:13) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:13) It's like, all right, I got a break. Now I'm going to prepare for my next set of punches.

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:52:19) Yeah. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:21) Cool. Well, Andrew, is there anything else we want to get out there to the world before we call it a day?

(Andrew Kiguel at 00:52:26) No. No. That was good. Thank you, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:28) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.