Most humanoid robot companies are still running curated demos in replica environments. Foundation Future Industries is running 150 robots on real automotive production lines in Georgia, and heading to Ukraine this year to deploy on the battlefield. Mike LeBlanc, the co-founder of Foundation Future Industries - currently the only company supplying humanoid robots to the US Department of Defense, with contracts across the Army, Navy, and Air Force, joins Craig Smith to explain why the race is moving faster than almost anyone in the industry believes, and why the companies that are moving cautiously are about to be left behind. His frame is striking: he keeps a framed 1906 New York Times article on his office wall predicting that human flight would take between one million and ten million years. It was published three months before the Wright Brothers flew. He thinks humanoids are in exactly that moment right now.
The conversation covers the full operational picture: how Foundation trains robots using video rather than simulation; why the fry-cook robot that couldn't open the bag of fries is a perfect metaphor for everything wrong with how most companies approach go-to-market in this space; why the human form factor isn't a philosophical preference but an empirical fact, humans are still doing every job in every factory that other robots can't, and that's the proof of concept; and why Mike LeBlanc isn't particularly worried about competing against Boston Dynamics backed by Google DeepMind, because they're still demoing in replica sites while Foundation is deploying on production lines.
The episode ends with a bet: LeBlanc tells Craig that in twelve months, he'll be back to report 10,000 robots deployed in the world. Craig says he remains cautious. One of them is going to be right.
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