Decart makes AI faster, Lume teaches lamps to fold laundry | E2166
18 Aug 2025 · 38 min
This is a podcast episode titled "Decart makes AI faster, Lume teaches lamps to fold laundry | E2166" released in August 2025. The episode features interviews with Dean Leitersdorf from Descartes AI discussing their real-time AI video model technology called Mirage and its applications, and Aaron Tan from Sincere AI explaining their innovative robotic lamp that folds laundry and other household chores. The conversation covers technical details, business insights, and future product plans. The podcast is a single-host interview format with guests but does not include Dave Erickson as a speaker.
Mirage is the only real time video model in existence today. Even the big tech still don't have it. Except for Google. Google does have this, but even the other big tech, as far as we know, don't have this. And it's challenging to build because you have to build a completely different model. On the algorithmic side, you're training actually a different model. It's lots of algorithmic mathematical challenges and at the same time you have to write a bunch of assembly code for GPUs. Like all this was written like in PTX. It was assembly for GPUs to actually get it to execute like this efficiently.
This week in Startups is brought to you by Stripe Startups. Stripe Startups offers early stage venture backed startups access to stripe fee credits, expert insights and a focused community of builders. Apply today on stripe.com startups netsuite. The business landscape is very chaotic right now. That's why you need NetSuite by Oracle. Download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning for free at netsuite.com twist and openphone create business phone numbers for you and your team that work through an app on your smartphone or desktop. Twist listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first six months at openphone.com twist hey everybody. Welcome back to Twist. This is Alex and today we have two absolutely amazing interviews for you. First, we're talking to the folks over at Descartes AI. You may recall that they recently raised 100 million at a $3.1 billion valuation. Quite a lot of money. What are they building? Well, Descartes got its start actually working on GPU optimization and since then has been working on world models. This comes in the form of Mirage and Oasis. And if that does strike a bell, that's because I showed off Descartes Oasis World Models on the show last November. I've been dying to talk to the company about what they're building and where AI is going. So stay tuned. It's an amazing chat. Then after that, Jason and I are talking to the folks behind Sincere AI. Don't you know that company? Well, you actually do. They're the company behind that viral video of the lamps that sit next to your bed and then turn into robot arms and then do your laundry for you. Well, we were really curious, how far along is that product? What are the margins? What's it gonna cost? When's it coming? And also, what are they gonna build next? So stay tuned because we have all that and quite a lot more from Sincere AI. So first Descartes, then Sincere. You're welcome. Let's go back in November. Here on Twist, we took a look at a really cool product from a company called Dakart. It had built a world model that generated a game around you. So you play the game and then it was kind of making it as you went. I was enraptured by this. Just blown away. Now, I'm happy to report that since then, Descartes has gone on to raise $100 million at a higher valuation and has stayed very, very busy shipping new goodies. So to help us understand what Descartes is building and to explain what the hell a world model really is, please welcome to the show. It's Dean Leitersdorf. Dean, how you doing?
Hey, how's it going? Thanks so much for having me.
I'm so glad. Also, you're calling in from Tel Aviv, where it's midnight, so you get like double extra credit, bonus points for burning the midnight oil. Here.
Midnight is like regular working hours. If I show you around the office right now, the office is still full.
Okay, jokes aside, Descartes does a couple of things, and I want to just talk about each one quickly, in sequence. You guys got your start doing GPU optimization, essentially helping people that are training AI models or running inference to dramatically lower their cost. And if I understanding that's where the company started.
Yeah, the company started by making a lot of money, and that's a good thing to do. Okay. And the way we did it was by saving a lot of people lots of money. You really are good at getting the most out of GPUs. And GPUs are expensive because Nvidia makes a lot of money. There's a handful of products with insanely high margins that make over 100 billion a year. The H100 is one of them, by the way. There's only four others, one of them being the Vatican. Very interesting, but completely different discussion.
Similarly, hard to get your hands on, though. You can't really get the Vatican and you can't get a lot of H1 hundreds. There you go.
But, you know, next startup will optimize the Vatican. We started off the cart. The card's only less than 2 years old. First year was really focused on how do we get the most out of GPUs, how do we get them to be insanely fast, insanely efficient from a software level.
When we.
When we started out the cart, we were ideating for a long time like, okay, what do we build? Do we build, you know, everything From a solar panel company to cybersecurity, to AI for healthcare, and just nothing stuck. But we're honest with ourselves and we realized that just once in our life we got to try to build a kilo corn. So you know, you have the unicorns, Decacorns, Centicorns and kilo corns. Build a kilos, a thousand. Build a trillion dollar company. Actually try to build a company that matters. Okay. Build a Facebook, build a Google, build an Apple. Build a company that if you look at the world before and after, it's a completely different world now. When you start things like that, everything starts making sense. You don't have too many options. There's only a handful of things you can actually do. And in our day and age, I think there's pretty much only one thing you can actually do. Create a billion user consumer experience. That ChatGPT is the last billion user app out of it. I just can't.
Oh no, I don't think it is. But so billion user consumer application, it has to be something then that I'm going to touch every day. It has to be accessible via standard communication devices because you can't reach a billion people otherwise. So how did you narrow down to what to build to meet that standard?
Okay, you know, I have to actually show you something. Let me, let me show you something.
Okay, let's do it.
Okay. I don't know if you saw this, but we launched Mirage recently. As you can see, this is Mirage. And you can see the real me. And now you can see me in the Versailles palace, or you can see me in a blocky kind of world. Okay. Or you can see me in anime.
Oh, I don't think that suits you actually.
What about. Oh, we can do this. This is one of my favorite ones. Okay. This is a wizard's world. Let me find. One second, I'll get. Here's a pen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
See this pen? See this red pen? Great. If I put it in the wizard's world, sometimes it becomes a magic wand. You can like cast magic spells with it. Okay. I can also change to say portal. Okay. And then if I have a shampoo bottle here.
Standard office accoutrement.
We actually do have a shower here because I am going to go shower after this before we go to bed because they have a bed in the office. But the shampoo can turn into a portal gun. Okay. You can try to launch portals with this every once in a while. It does work. With the next version model, you'll be able to just Say, okay, launch portal. And then boom, it'll open up.
So, Dean, let's talk about what this is. So this is a real time model that can take so a video that you give it and automatically transpose it to a different style. But you don't have to give it a video, wait for it to process. It's happening as you're using it, which I presume was technically very easy.
AI video models to date, they've always taken a lot of time to generate their outputs. You know, you give it a prompt and then you wait a bunch of time and 10 seconds, maybe 20 seconds for some miles, even a minute, and you get something back. Mirage has a 40 millisecond delay, like 0.04 seconds. Okay, so the version that you're seeing right now you can actually play with is it takes any input video stream, any prompt, and just changes it based on the prompt. What we're going to launch pretty soon is also just generic video generation that's 40 milliseconds in. So you just tell it something and boom, it creates it.
So in the case of the real time usage, what you just showed me with it making you into different forms, 40 milliseconds, is that a lot or a little? Because I know that if I'm playing a first person shooter in a competitive environment, that's probably a lot, but for pretty much everything else, that seems quick enough. I think.
Exactly. We're also going to be dropping it pretty soon. It should reach like 16 milliseconds a month from now.
Okay, and going back to the first topic of GPU optimization, I am just presuming that this does not melt entire data centers.
Mirage is the only real time video model in existence today. Even the big tech still don't have it. Except for Google. Google does have this, but even the other big tech, as far as we know, don't have this. And it's challenging to build because you have to build a completely different model. On the algorithmic side, you're training actually a different model. It's lots of algorithmic mathematical challenges. And at the same time, you have to write a bunch of assembly code for GPUs. Like all this was written like in PTX, it was assembly for GPUs to actually get it to execute like this efficiently.
Okay. So you have to do the hard work of making the AI model and then you have to go essentially reprogram the GPUs to actually be efficient. So technically, very impressive. And visually, because I love this sort of thing, stunning to me. But I'm curious where you see it finding commercial application. You do have an example up on the site of someone looking down their sniper rifle site inside of a game. And I think there's an effect inside there of which again visually is stunning. But is that where you see this kind of slotting into the economy today?
I think it completely take over like half the Internet. And I'll explain what, what was the previous Internet pre ChatGPT it was basically four things. You had knowledge, which was basically everything under Google's domain. Second category that you had was creativity. What do you do when you're not doing your homework? Okay, and that's, you know, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Then you had communication, WhatsApp, iMessage and you had shopping.
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Chatbots have completely taken over the frisk portion of the Internet. It's gone.
The knowledge portion.
The knowledge portion, exactly. I don't know who will win, if it'll be OpenAI or Gemini or XAI whoever. But chatbots are the way humanity is going to access knowledge and going to create knowledge going forward. That's it is done Shopping I think will be split in two. You're not going to browse Amazon.com or shopify. Your chatbot is going to tell you hey look, here's something cool or you know, try this on or whatever. Messaging, completely different topic. I can get into it. But I do think chatbots will take over that as well. And we're left over with creativity, which.
Is a quarter of the prior Internet going by one of four categories.
It is the largest. And the nice thing is that as we get more productive and we spend less time doing our work, it's the only category that's growing, that fundamentally has to grow. If we now have to do four days a week of work or three days a week of work, as bots start making us more productive, we're going to have more and more and more creativity time. What's going to completely change your experience when you're having fun? That is, I think, the biggest open question today in the consumer Internet. Someone is going to answer that question in the next year and whoever answers that question is going to be a trillion dollar company.
So to me, what you're describing sounds like a new world that we inhabit that is persistently drawn by. I mean, perhaps something along the lines of your Oasis model.
Exactly. And that's where we get to what a world model is that has an incredible ability. Just look at a bunch of videos and get how the world behind them works and then just let you come up with completely new worlds. For the first time, we can take what's in our mind and just instantly show it to ourselves and to others and really have a completely immersive experience.
No, I love that. Now what you're describing to me still feels relatively single player because the entertainment or consumption portion of the Internet that we described, Netflix and TikTok and so forth, mostly consumption, not as much creation. It's a single player experience. What I think you're kind of talking about though, feels much more multiplayer. As in you and I are doing this together. So are you and I sharing down the road when we're working towards a billion people and a kilo corn or whatever the fuck it was, Are we together or are we still apart in that world?
You know something? So, you know, we just put up the Mirage demo three weeks ago and we've been mind blown by what people do with it. And what blew us the most was that people actually did physical experiences together. So we had so many people just took out like broomsticks and started hitting each other and they put like a Star wars prompt and it just turned into lightsabers and hitting each other with broomsticks suddenly becomes, you know, an okay thing to do when, when, when the world sees it as you guys having a lightsaber fight. I really think it'd be mind blowing to See if it creates a new reason for people to hang out in person and just have some physical combined joint interaction and have the AI cast that into different worlds.
Did you ever play with Microsoft's HoloLens headset?
No. We do have the Quest 3 and the Vision Pro here, but not the HoloLens.
HoloLens blew me away. So I used to be a Microsoft beat reporter, so I just covered the company and. And I got invited up to Redmond for the HoloLens first day. Like no one had knew this thing existed. And I was playing, I put it on and suddenly I could play a game that was on a tabletop that was real, but the assets were digitally drawn on top of it. And I like, you know, pushed little. It was kind of a Minecraft ish game. Like everything is at that level. And I kind of like pushed blocks through tables and got to interact digitally and physically at the same time. And I've never quite forgotten how straight up magic that felt. So I do think there's a point of synthesis. I think it's actually more of a physical form factor question than it is how does the software work?
100%. I think it's a physical form factor. Something that blew our minds with Mirage. Do you know how many hotels reached out to us? Hotels. Hotels reached out to us and said, can we stick this in our lobbies?
Oh, as a game.
As exactly as like a new game, a new experience. So like, can we just stick this in our lobbies? And they will put up a big TV screen and a nice camera on top and people will just walk by and be like, huh, I'm in frozen right now. And use that as a gateway to you arrived at your vacation. Imagine like you're going to a resort in the Bahamas and so you walk up in front of the screen and you're all sweaty after your flight and everything and suddenly, boom, you're, you know, in your beach shorts and everything's sunny and we're like, huh? We never imagined that this is what people want to do the first week of Mirage.
That is surprising. But if I was a Las Vegas hotel, I would put you in a James Bond style tux with a martini and a sack of roulette chips, for example. Or if I was in Russia, maybe a funny hat or whatever it is. I like that. But there's several steps between where we are today with Mirage and Oasis. I can see them coming together. I can see the vision. I also think that you and I have the similar optimistic view about where we're going. I guess what I'm curious about is what are the steps in between and are they frequent and small or infrequent and large?
It took us seven months between Oasis and Mirage because there were lots of key breakthroughs that we had to solve. I think that a year from now, if we have this interview again in a year, we'll be living in a completely different world. And the answer of who gets to be the AI that you use when you're not doing your homework will probably be answered in this upcoming year. Just because there's so many product advances that are going to be coming out based on this tech.
Now, based on this tech, are you referring to AI as a whole or what you guys are cooking up in.
Particular AI, video and audio combination of AI, video, audio models, real time is just going to completely. It's going to be incredibly fast and it's going to also have so many products built on top of it.
So this is a business show. I know it doesn't sound like one so far, but when people talk about building models, usually what I hear in the background is the crackling fire of entire bales of cash. You guys told Fortune that you had burned incredibly small amounts of money like 10 million when you raised your last round. And usually when I talk to a company that's doing that, they found some way to have a very efficient go to market motion or whatever it is. You guys are doing the hard expensive thing and not losing money. And I'm just kind of curious, is that going to be something you can keep doing through this process of progress or. Or is it going to get more expensive to fulfill this vision?
What's been very central to the card from day one was being able to actually utilize GPUs incredibly efficiently. And we're significantly better than that than the rest of the industry. By doing this, we're actually able to do what costs hundreds of millions of dollars for other people in order to magnitude less cash. That's a key fundamental advantage that we have. It is based on the tech stack that we built over the past two years. It is surprisingly hard to replicate. Now that we have this as our bedrock, it really sets us apart. And being just able to operate incredibly more cash efficiently and create new products that other people just can't create.
Okay, so you have the right team, you can make this stuff cheap. Things are moving quickly. I guess then the right next question is what is coming? You've hinted now at new models that are coming in the next couple of weeks. Or months. So without breaking your own internal NDAs, what should I be looking for from you guys? As you work towards this trillion dollar billion user feature, so you're going to.
See three things, okay? From the lab, from the Experiences team and from the B2B team, from the Enterprise team, from the lab, you're just going to see insanely cool models coming out. I can tease one of them already. Imagine in real time now just Mirage currently changes the entire world. The next version also gets to make local edits. So I can for example, just be like, hey, give me a sword. And then boom, I get a sword without anything else changing. Give me a long ponytail. Then boom, I get a long ponytail and make it ninja style hair and make it sleek black or something and change my entire clothing to ninja.
You're gonna turn every Zoom into an RPG character creator screen.
Exactly. The amount of products you can build on top of this is insane. We're going to build our own like Mirage, Zoom, Mirage, FaceTime, Mirage, Snapchat, Mirage, YouTube mirror, everything they currently imagine just with, hey, let me just change the entire stream in real time.
So is that one app? Because you could do, you could do Zoom and WhatsApp and everything else as a combined experience that is multi platform or as a multi part product. So what are you thinking?
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This In a combination. So, so, so a lot of it's going to be combined to one. Some of it will be standoff. For example, gaming. Gaming makes sense as its own gaming platform. We're going to be launching mods for some of the popular games. For example, you can install a mod, then boom, change your Minecraft world into frozen. So we're going to, we're going to see gaming platforms, we're going to see social platforms, we have lots of products that we're going to launch very soon surrounding built on this tech that we're creating. And the last part is we just had so much inbound for enterprise usage for this from the entertainment space, from the education space. By the way, teachers love this. They can, you know, just turn their entire classroom into a safari or to dinosaurs or whatever.
School has changed since I was there.
Teachers are looking for something to keep kids engaged. You know, something mind blowing that happened. Hospitals reached out. One hospital reached out and was like, you know, a big problem with kids hospitals is that, you know, when you do procedure on a child, they're, they're scared and you know, they're uncomfortable and so they try to distract them and they showed the mirage and the kids were just captivated by it. Like, holy shit, look at what happened to me. I turned into something super cool and the doctor was able to do whatever they need.
Dentist, office. My spouse is a physician who is also a pediatrician. So this is very apropos to the world that I'm right next to. So I can see the absolute demand for that.
So many different domains that we probably can't even imagine where it begins, where it ends, but we can see where it begins. And so you're going to see all three things. You're going to see new models, new consumer experiences and new enterprise applications. And then it'll be quite a ride. We have a few amazing weeks coming up.
Okay, Dean, we've already gone way over time, so I have to kind of wrap us up here. But being very honest, I saw what you guys built. I left it. I saw that you raised 100 million, I think like a $3.1 billion valuation. And I went, huh, Now I get it. There aren't that many companies, apart from maybe OpenAI that are thinking this expansive and long term. And if you're right, cool. And if you're not, cool. But I mean, at least you're taking a swing big enough that you might smack the moon. So I'm here for it.
Once in your life, you gotta give it a shot. Either it works. Or you had the best ride you can possibly have.
All right, Tell people where they can find Descartes on the Internet. And if you have a role you're having a hard time filling, shout it out so the world can gather around.
So we would love for you guys to visit Dakart, AI or Twitter accounts, TikTok accounts, all our socials. The best role that we have to fill right now. We have insanely talented people. We need the most talented young marketing person possible. And you can't have a nice marketing degree. What you need to have is insanely creative TikTok or Instagram or YouTube short skills to just be able to take this visual tech that we're building and show the world what it can do.
All right, well, Dean, thank you so much. And we'll have you back. Not in a year. It'll be sooner than that, because I'm sure there's gonna be a lot to talk about. But I appreciate you very much. Go have that shower. Get some rest, man.
Talk soon. Good night.
A couple days ago, there was a big viral video on Twitter of a couple of lamps that turned into robotic arms and began to fold clothing. Everybody hates doing laundry. Everyone loved this idea. Many questions about what it can be used for and where it is. But to help us explain all that and more, let's welcome Aaron Tan from Sincere AI, the company behind the loom robot lamp. Aaron. Hey.
Hey. How's it going? Thanks for having me.
I saw the video, and I thought immediately. And we'll play the video now while I'm talking. Number one, this is AI generated. It's not real. It looks too insane to be real. Please confirm with me that what we've seen here is a real video.
It's a. It's not an AI generated video, but it's also not a real video either. It's. It's a rent. It's a render of our design. Yes.
Okay, so this is a render. That's because it felt a little, like, too perfect. So you're making these lamps with these precision clips on them. We're playing right now. Explain to me why you chose, as an entrepreneur, this specific design. And these calipers at the end, if I could call them calipers, they look like calipers, pinchers. And, you know, you have to have an initial use case. You went with folding laundry. And with this specific design, it's iconic. It's quixotic. Why this?
Right. Yeah, I mean, we. You know, my. When we started this company, our main goal was to get rid of chores for people. So we wanted to build robots to automate those things away. Right. But as we, you know, we started at the beginning of the year and as we worked on this idea of just like robots to automated chores, the thing that we learned over the time was that nobody actually wakes up and asks for a robot. People just want a way to get rid of their chores. And no one really wants their home to look like a factory with these free roaming industrial grade machines that poses kind of like safety and privacy issues. So essentially one thing led to another and ultimately we came up with this idea where it was like. And thanks to Beauty and the Beast as well, that was one of the main inspirations.
Oh, my. Beauty and the Beast had like the candelabra, the teacup.
Yes.
Amazing. Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So one thing led to another and we basically just like came to realization that, you know, we, we want to get rid of chores for people, but we want to do it in a way where it doesn't feel like we're adding robots to your home.
Got it.
And the best way to do that is to hide robotics in plain sight and have them work in this sort of ambient background manner where you don't realize there's anything really there.
That's why they, when they're at rest, they're just gorgeous, well designed lamps. Got it.
Right.
When will you deliver this and at what approximate cost? Because I think you're taking pre orders.
Yes, yes. So we have a pre order list. Now. The majority of the people on the waitlist will get theirs 12 months from now. But we've sort of started this new, like early beta tester club and we're going to get the units to those folks within six months.
Amazing. Approximate cost for a pair of these. Yeah.
Everybody wants to know price is somewhere between 1 to $2,000.
Got it. So this is an early adopter type thing. If you were paying somebody to fold clothes for five hours a week at $30 an hour, that's $150. That would probably be a family's clothes. So if I were to look at it to get rid of that chore, if I was paying somebody to do it, which is the people in this benchmark, Alex. 150 bucks a week savings for five hours of laundry, which I think is what a family of five might do. Pays for itself in 10 weeks. Is that about what you're thinking, Aaron?
Yep, that's. Yeah, exactly.
How is it so cheap? I thought it was gonna cost me five and then I was gonna have to do the math. Jason just did. But if it's $1,000, I kind of feel like it's almost an impulse buy.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're trying to push it as sub 2000 is what I've said on the Internet. We're trying to get it as low as possible. The first batch is probably going to be closer to $2,000. Yeah.
But the BOM on something like this, I'm guessing, is 80% of that cost. Right. This isn't super expensive, but the first iterations you'll break even at while you refine it is kind of. As an entrepreneur with a plan.
Yes, yes.
Okay.
So go ahead, Alex.
Oh, I was just curious, you know, what are you guys going to work on next? Because I have a list of chores that I hate doing and I could write it down for you. It's quite long. So once you figured out the laundry inside of this, I presume sincere AI, your company is not going to stop at just folding stuff in my bedroom. So what's the next robot that's going to come out and what are you going to hide it inside of?
Yeah, I think as of right now, the current plan, at least what I'm allowed to share, is that we want to keep to the same form factor, but it will do more than laundry folding. We sort of envision. Sort of. These are like single floor lamps that you can kind of place anywhere in the home. They have limited mobility, so they can move around a little bit. And the whole idea is that depending on where they're placed, they can do tasks that contextually make sense in that particular area. Okay, so when it's like in your bedroom, laundry folding is, I think everyone can agree, is like the killer feature. But there's like other little things that people have asked for, like bed making or, you know, even just simple things like holding an iPad in bed for you all the way up to like massages and back rubs and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Right.
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Yeah, there's an obvious next question to the background massage element of this. And you guys have have spoken that those adult quote, quote use cases are off the roadmap, right?
Well, I'll say this. We will have an app store and the app store.
Here we go. You can get interesting quick.
I could not have served up a bigger softball for you and you just went, no, I'm not going to swing at that.
I wasn't even, I didn't even consider.
Your line of questioning, Alex.
Well done. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, it's grabby hands in bed, Jason. I mean there's things that people are going to do with it, but people have said that you actually said that there's going to be over the air updates to this thing. So it's going to get smarter. After I buy it, if I get the lamp from my bedroom, can I take it to my kitchen later on and have it help with the dishes? Or will it be a separate device?
You can certainly carry it and place it there if you like. But I sort of see this future where people probably have multiple floor lamps in their homes, all doing different things.
Yeah.
I mean the way it's designed, you could easily see it by a kitchen island.
Exactly.
Cutting vegetables. Does it have casters on the bottom where it will move around your space? Like caster is a fancy word for wheels, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, it does have wheels and they are actuated. That's how we have it in prototype. I think the main thing we're trying to make sure we're doing is that we want to limit how much range of motion it has for safety reasons. I think that everybody in the home should at all times know where the robot exactly is. So there's no sort of like free roaming upstairs, downstairs, into your private space, all that kind of stuff. So wherever you put it, whatever contextually makes sense in that limited range. We're picturing like a meter, two meters tops. It can handle the tasks there.
How does it see? Because to be doing the laundry, it has to be able to have vision and to do other things. But also you mentioned privacy and I just realized that if I Do have both these lamps in my bedroom. I might not want them to be washing all the time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a great question. This is something that we thought carefully of. The best way for me to show you is we have a sort of a. An early prototype here. So this thing is designed. The short answer is that the camera and everything that is robotic about this lamp is housed inside the lamp hoods. So only when you give it permission does it then open up, reveal the camera, reveal the sort of robot fingers. So these lamp hoods almost act as. Not almost. They act exactly as mechanical shutters that some folks have on their laptops or whatever. So only until you've given it permission does everything robotic about it reveals itself. Otherwise, it's all nicely packaged and sort of contained inside lamppods.
How much did you raise or does one need to raise? And what lunatic backed this company? Because this is so. I mean, you got to have a real. Yeah, yeah. This takes a unique person, I think.
Yeah, yeah. It's a bit unorthodox.
Unorthodox. Thank you.
I've, you know, I've heard all sorts of things. You know, when we. When we first started pitching this, we were like, oh, we're gonna build robot lamps that fold laundry. And everybody sort of told us, like, those words don't feel like they belong next to each other. Um, but in terms of the raise, we're actually still in the middle of the fundraise, hence the reschedule of the. Of the pod. I would have more to share on that. Maybe a week from now.
Okay.
Okay. Well, I'm stoked, Jason. I think this is awesome. I think this is exactly what I want to see. I think we've talked about humanoid robots in the show a lot because they're a great idea for a lot of settings. But I also think it's a good point about the house. I don't actually probably have room for a humanoid robot to be bouncing around the house. It would get in the way.
So that's what closets for. There's going to be like a. I think everybody's going to have a robot closet where the robot goes to just, you know, tell it to go into the pantry and it's like, C3PO is going to be in the pantry. Like, oh, what did I do? It's like, just go, go, go into the oil tank. Remember, he goes into the oil tank and does all this stuff.
Have you read Murderbot, Jason, the series?
I have not.
Murderbot is about a robot that's A. It's a humanoid robot, and it's just kind of sad all the time. And so it's this interesting st about like, basically a bodyguard robot that has sentience and gets sad. And it's now a series on, I think, Apple TV plus. But I think we're going to end up with very similar. He has a closet he goes to to repair himself, which is why it came to mind. But I think we're going that way too.
Aaron, this is incredible.
Thank you.
What's next? This is obviously one of a collection of robot operating system. You're building an app store, so you're going to have four or five different SKUs, I take it, over time.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's. I mean, lamps is. Lamps are such a sort of a personal thing that I think people will probably have different styles that they want that fits okay.
Sure.
Parts of their homes. And we. We sort of see a product lineup of everything from tabletop lamps to floor lamps to lamps with multiple heads that could do different things.
Yeah, that's the thing I think would be interesting because you have those pinchers, but there are other attachments. So having it be able to go to. I don't know, maybe it's in its base, have five different types of hands for different purposes. Obviously, you don't want to be massaged with.
Exactly.
That could be. I mean, unless you're into some shiatsu, I guess, or if you're into acne puncture. But whatever. Whatever your bag is, Alex, you know, maybe you want pain in your massage.
I'm sorry. I'm a really big science fiction fan. I'm pro robotics. I love technology. I'm a capitalist. I will never get acupuncture from the lamp beside my bed. That's where I draw. I found it. There's my line, Jason, right there.
Wait, you're saying Murderbot editorial director. Lon, our director, says Murderbot's gonna become an Apple TV series.
Yeah, I think the first season's out right now.
All right, you learned something new here. All right, listen, Aaron, continued success. If you're raising. You have my email. If you happen to raise money at some point, I might want to. I might want to join this lunatic investor group that you're assembling. If you are in fact. Or maybe you're just doing this off of profits, but. Which is also notable, but, gosh, this is the kind of crazy I'm here for.
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