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·YouTLDR

The Biggest AI Deployment Nobody Talks About | Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas

1:00:331,429 summary words · ~7 min readEnglishBy The MAD Podcast with Matt TurckTranscribed Aug 6, 2026
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Summary

Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas explains how physical AI—deploying edge hardware, multimodal sensors, and agentic workflows across non-digitized real-world industries like logistics, construction, and utilities—represents a $2B ARR market operating at the intersection of enterprise automation, compute infrastructure, and heavy physical operations.

Physical operations represent 40-50% of global GDP, but because real-world operational data cannot be web-scraped, capturing its value requires proprietary edge hardware, localized model inference, and physical-world orchestration.

Section summaries

0:00-3:28

Introduction & Defining Physical AI

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Host Matt Turk introduces Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas and outlines Samsara's scale: $2B ARR growing at 30% profitably, 25 trillion annual data points, and daily coverage of 99% of US roads. Biswas defines Physical AI as applying AI to non-digitized infrastructure outside digital environments, such as construction yards, electrical grids, and supply chains. He explains that physical infrastructure lacks pre-existing digital bits, requiring multi-sensor fusion across GPS, video, weather, and speed telemetry.

  • Physical AI operates on non-digitized physical assets representing half of global GDP.
  • Sensor fusion across video, accelerometers, and environmental telemetry creates rich context.

Establishes core concepts and metrics for physical AI and Samsara's operating scale.

3:28-7:22

Challenges of the Physical World vs Digital SaaS

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Biswas contrasts the century-long timelines of physical infrastructure with rapid digital software cycles. He outlines the shift from static reporting tables to reasoning and agentic action over physical data. The discussion covers why Silicon Valley traditionally avoided physical AI due to hardware harshness, network unreliability, and frontline adoption barriers, noting that the physical world accounts for 40-50% of global GDP.

  • Enterprise value in physical AI has shifted from data reporting to reasoning and autonomous execution.
  • Physical AI is higher friction due to hardware deployment but addresses massive economic value.

Explains why physical AI is harder to execute but far more defensible than digital software.

7:22-11:28

Samsara Overview & Safety Metrics

optional

Biswas details Samsara's product architecture, combining hardware sensors, cloud ingestion, and edge AI applications. He provides operational metrics, noting that Samsara's system helped prevent roughly 380,000 road accidents last year through real-time driver feedback. Key safety intervention vectors include detecting driver fatigue, night driving risks, seatbelt non-compliance (10% US baseline rate), and mobile phone distractions.

  • Real-time edge alerting directly prevents hundreds of thousands of commercial vehicle accidents.
  • Simple habit interventions like seatbelts and phone avoidance produce major risk reductions.

Good overview of Samsara's core product metrics and concrete safety statistics.

11:28-15:44

Founder Journey: MIT RoofNet to Meraki to Samsara

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Biswas reflects on meeting his co-founder John Bicket at MIT, building RoofNet to cover Cambridge with Wi-Fi, and founding Meraki (acquired by Cisco). He explains how transitioning from networking hardware to physical operations required approaching Samsara with a 'beginner's mind,' spending time directly on loading docks and construction yards to understand direct-sales customer needs.

  • Entering new operational verticals successfully requires field visits over textbook learning.
  • Direct-sales models and domain immersion reset prior entrepreneurial biases.

Standard founder backstory that adds little to the technological thesis.

15:44-24:49

The Hardware & Sensor Layer Architecture

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Biswas demonstrates physical hardware on desk, including tough BLE asset tags with 3-6 year battery lives and disposable BLE tracking stickers (45-day battery) for single-use shipments. He breaks down vehicle gateways reading engine ECU diagnostic time-series data and edge AI dashcams equipped with dual inward/outward cameras. These dashcams run localized computer vision models for real-time fatigue detection and closed-loop driver coaching.

  • Samsara uses industrial-grade BLE asset tags and sticker tags to create low-cost tracking mesh networks.
  • Vehicle gateways capture detailed ECU engine diagnostic time series.
  • Edge AI dashcams act as driver communication interfaces rather than simple recording devices.

Direct demonstration of hardware components and edge sensing mechanics.

24:49-31:23

Data Cloud Ingestion & Network Flywheels

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Biswas explains how cloud data warehouses ingest signals across diverse enterprise personas (drivers, dispatchers, mechanics, safety managers). He addresses defensibility, emphasizing that proprietary physical data cannot be scraped from the web. He describes three data network effects: crowd-sourced road safety warnings across shared routes, automated municipal pothole mapping via cameras/accelerometers, and cross-customer BLE mesh asset tracking.

  • Operational telemetry creates a non-crawlable data moat.
  • Daily coverage of 99% of US roads enables ancillary applications like municipal pothole detection.
  • Cross-customer BLE mesh networks help pinpoint lost equipment across multi-contractor job sites.

Deep dive into data defensibility and cross-customer physical network flywheels.

31:23-36:50

Model Architecture: Edge Inference vs Cloud VLMs

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Biswas clarifies the split between edge inference (running low-latency models for immediate driver feedback) and cloud compute (running vision-language models like JEPA-style architectures). Generative VLMs eliminate the need for offshore human video review by evaluating context—such as determining if sudden braking was caused by driver distraction or swerving to avoid an animal. Additionally, Samsara deploys AI-generated avatar video coaches for end-of-week driver reviews.

  • Edge models execute low-latency single-shot vision tasks; cloud VLMs handle complex situational video reasoning.
  • VLMs replace manual offshore video labeling by analyzing driver intent and environmental context.
  • Generative video avatars scale personalized coaching across large workforce populations.

Crucial details on the technical model hierarchy and video inference stack.

36:50-43:53

Agent Studio & Autonomous Operational Workflows

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Biswas highlights Samsara's launch of Agent Studio. He illustrates its power with a 'Warranty Agent' that reads vehicle fault codes, consults digital service manuals, cross-references OEM warranty contract terms, opens work orders, and scans the rest of the fleet for identical defects—reducing two hours of human labor to under a minute. He discusses combining deterministic guardrails with LLM reasoning over standardized shift workflows.

  • Agentic workflows automate complex back-office administrative tasks in industrial operations.
  • Combining guardrails and deterministic business logic prevents autonomous agents from hallucinating.
  • High-volume, low-risk administrative tasks represent prime early targets for enterprise agents.

Key discussion on Samsara's agentic AI deployment and real-world enterprise agent workflows.

43:53-50:37

Future AI Limits, Hardware Accelerators & Driver Exoneration

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Biswas predicts continuous shift analysis ('AI ride-alongs') will become standard within 1-2 years as token inference costs drop. He notes playing with Cerebras chips running Gemma 4 at 800-1,500 tokens/second (10x faster than standard GPUs) to enable heavy video processing. He addresses workforce privacy concerns, showing that 90% of dashcam video usage benefits drivers by exonerating them against false third-party insurance claims (e.g., Home Depot reducing auto claims by 65%).

  • Wafer-scale hardware accelerators enable order-of-magnitude faster token throughput for real-time video reasoning.
  • Frontline acceptance of AI surveillance relies heavily on using data for employee exoneration and safety recognition.

Valuable insights on inference hardware scaling (Cerebras) and social change management.

50:37-1:00:29

Robotics, Autonomy Timelines & Energy Grid Bottlenecks

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Biswas shares his 5-to-10-year outlook, predicting mixed fleets of humans and autonomous machinery across construction sites and logistics corridors. He projects that specialized commercial trade autonomy will diffuse much slower (10-20 years) than consumer robo-taxis due to complex site exceptions and custom vehicle bodies. Finally, he shares that an energy utility client must triple its grid capacity in 5 years—compared to what took 125 years to build—with 90% of new demand driven by AI data centers.

  • Commercial vehicle autonomy deployment timelines will take 10-20 years due to specialized trades.
  • AI data centers are driving massive real-world power grid capacity expansion.
  • Physical labor shortages in skilled trades are accelerating demand for automation tools.

Crucial macro analysis linking AI compute expansion directly to energy grid Chokepoints.

Key points

  • The Physical AI Frontier and the Real-World Data Gap — Physical AI targets non-digitized sectors like construction, energy, and supply chains where operational data cannot be scraped from public internet sources. Unlocking this requires custom hardware sensors, BLE tags, and vehicle gateways to capture real-time physical telemetry.
  • Edge-Cloud Hybrid Inference Architecture — Samsara splits its AI stack between low-latency edge inference running custom vision models directly on dashcams for real-time safety alerts and cloud-based vision-language models (VLMs) for complex retrospective reasoning.
  • Agentic Workflow Automation in Heavy Industry — Moving beyond static reporting dashboards, Samsara's Agent Studio enables multi-step autonomous agents to handle complex administrative tasks, such as cross-referencing vehicle fault codes against service manuals and OEM warranty terms to generate claims instantly.
  • Proprietary Data Flywheels and Physical Mesh Networks — With vehicles covering 99% of US roads daily, Samsara creates cross-customer data network effects, ranging from crowd-sourced pothole tracking via accelerometers and cameras to BLE mesh networks that locate untracked job-site assets.
  • AI Compute Expansion and Industrial Grid Bottlenecks — The rapid growth of AI data centers is forcing utility companies to scale physical grid capacity at unprecedented rates—with single energy utilities planning to triple their historical 125-year built capacity over the next 5 years.
These are not the tokens you're going to find online. Like you can't crawl Reddit and find out about what happened on a construction site. Sanjit Biswas
Over the last 125 years we built a certain amount of grid capacity... In the next 5 years, we're going to triple that. Sanjit Biswas

AI-generated from the transcript. May contain errors.

0:00

These are not the tokens you're going to

0:01

find online. Like you can't crawl Reddit

0:03

and find out about what happened on a

0:05

construction site. The Samsara system in

0:07

a given day were driving 99% of the US

0:09

roads usually multiple times a day. I

0:12

was just in the field last week with a

0:14

large energy utility. And uh they shared

0:16

with me a really interesting stat. They

0:17

said over the last 125 years we built a

0:20

certain amount of grid capacity. In the

0:21

next 5 years, we're going to triple

0:23

that. We're talking about millions and

0:25

millions of vehicles. We believe we

0:26

helped prevent about 380,000 car

0:29

crashes, road accidents in the last

0:30

year.

0:31

>> Hi, I'm Matt Turk. Welcome to the Matt

0:32

podcast. My guest today is Sanjit

0:34

Biswas, co-founder and CEO of Sanssara,

0:38

the 20 billion company running what

0:39

might be the largest AI deployment in

0:42

the physical world. Millions of

0:43

vehicles, 25 trillion data points a

0:46

year, driving 99% of US roads every

0:48

single day. We talked about physical AI,

0:51

agents for truckers and frontline

0:53

workers, humanoids, autonomous trucks,

0:56

and why the AI boom is really an

0:58

infrastructure construction project. Oh,

1:00

and if you're enjoying this episode or

1:03

if you've liked others in the past,

1:04

please do us a favor and hit that

1:06

subscribe button. It takes a second. New

1:09

episodes will show up right in your feed

1:10

and it really helps the podcast. Now,

1:13

here's Sanjit.

1:16

All right, Sanjit. On this podcast,

1:18

we've talked a lot about AI models and

1:21

software agents, but we have spoken a

1:24

little less about physical AI. So, this

1:26

feels like the episode where we're going

1:27

to talk about how uh AI is confronting

1:30

the physical reality of transportation

1:33

and construction and plants and

1:34

utilities. So, maybe let's start with

1:36

physical AI. That's a term that uh we

1:39

hear about more and more often these

1:42

days, typically in the context of like

1:43

humanoids and robot taxes. from your

1:46

perspective, what is physical AI?

1:48

>> Yeah, absolutely. Well, first Matt,

1:50

thanks for having me on your show. Um, I

1:52

would say physical AI is really the

1:53

application of AI to the physical world.

1:55

So, if you think about the

1:56

infrastructure of our planet, it's way

1:58

more than just the roads where you might

1:59

see a Whimo robo taxi. Uh, it's the

2:01

construction sites, it's the electrical

2:03

grid, it's really kind of like all the

2:05

plumbing that's under the street. It's

2:06

it's it's everything out there. The

2:09

interesting challenge, I think, with

2:10

physical AI is that it's not digitized.

2:13

Uh, right? like this is the frontier

2:15

where you don't have decades of bits

2:17

that you can reason over and tokenize

2:19

and and quickly ingest and that makes it

2:21

really fascinating because the amount of

2:23

value is is kind of that's trapped is

2:25

really significant. Um so we think about

2:27

it in a few different ways. We think

2:29

about um you know digitizing things like

2:31

location from GPS tracking. Of course we

2:34

think about using cameras as sensors. So

2:36

you can use that to understand the

2:38

physical world in a pretty rich way

2:39

especially when you ingest lots and lots

2:41

of basically video footage. Uh if you

2:43

think about how many frames you get from

2:45

that it's really significant. And then

2:47

there's a lot of other uh kind of data

2:49

sources uh whether it's like weather

2:52

sources of like what happened with

2:53

precipitation on all the roads. um you

2:56

can think about speed limit data like

2:57

there's lots and lots of physical

2:59

aspects of the world that uh when you

3:01

put them together when you fuse them

3:03

together uh there's a huge value unlock

3:05

>> and um maybe walk us through how AI

3:09

changes that whole discussion so uh you

3:11

know there was industrial automation

3:13

obviously that's been going on for

3:14

decades and perhaps centuries then there

3:16

was a whole wave of IoT and famously

3:20

your ticker as a public company is IoT

3:23

and Navas AI I um how how different is

3:27

the current moment?

3:28

>> Yeah. Well, it's interesting you

3:30

mentioned centuries because that is like

3:31

the right time scale to think about

3:33

physical infrastructure, right? All the

3:34

way back to like the Roman era, like

3:36

there's pretty significant

3:37

infrastructure out there. So many of

3:39

these processes of like how do you

3:41

maintain a roadway have been in place

3:43

for a very very long time. A lot of that

3:45

process was manual, right? Like let's go

3:47

inspect the condition of the road. let's

3:49

understand when it was last worked on,

3:51

you know, let let's kind of dig it up

3:52

and see what we find. If you think about

3:55

the ability to digitize that and then

3:56

use sensor data, it's a huge unlock. So

3:58

the question becomes how do you get the

4:00

data? Then how do you process it? And

4:02

then how do you come up with a

4:03

meaningful insight or really an action

4:05

like what should we do about it? Uh and

4:07

that's that's I think now possible. The

4:09

last call it two decades was around

4:11

reporting like how do we ingest the data

4:13

and give you a really cool like table so

4:15

you can look at it and reason about it,

4:17

figure it out. Now what's awesome really

4:19

in the last two three years is the AIS

4:21

are able to reason about this kind of

4:23

information. They can look for other

4:25

context clues and then give you the

4:27

insight and now we're actually seeing a

4:29

Gentic AI of course which is it can take

4:31

an action for you can maybe schedule the

4:34

work to be done or or start performing

4:35

some of the work itself.

4:36

>> Why hasn't um Silicon Valley been all

4:39

over that problem space? I mean it feels

4:43

like we've been talking about chatbots

4:45

and then agent more in the kind of

4:46

digital and software realm. Uh I mean

4:49

obviously there's Tesla there's there's

4:52

you know humanoids being being built. Um

4:54

but is that is that did all of that need

4:57

to happen before this could be applied

4:59

to the physical world or is or is the

5:01

physical world just like a different set

5:02

of challenges altogether? You know, I

5:04

think it makes complete sense where all

5:06

of this AI wave has started, which is in

5:08

the digital word world. We had all the

5:10

bits. We had, you know, you know,

5:12

pabytes of data to reason over and

5:14

there's a great training set. So, you

5:16

think about all the trillions of tokens

5:17

that were needed to get these models

5:19

bootstrapped. The physical world is much

5:21

messier and there's also a hardware

5:23

component to it. And there's kind of

5:24

this saying of like hardware is hard,

5:26

right? Like this stuff has to like hold

5:27

up in the environment. It's got to relay

5:29

the data over like unreliable networks.

5:32

uh it has to be deployed to the front

5:34

lines and that requires a lot of sort of

5:37

messy work, right? Um physical hardware

5:39

installations, getting millions of

5:41

frontline workers to adopt new

5:42

technologies like integrate it into

5:44

their day-to-day work and it's basically

5:46

not as much lowhanging fruit as what

5:48

we've seen kind of in the digital world.

5:50

All that being said, it's a massive part

5:52

of the global economy, right? All these

5:54

industries, they make up about 40 50% of

5:56

world GDP. And so it's an area where you

5:59

can have tremendous impact, but you have

6:00

to really roll up your sleeves and get

6:02

much more involved than uh kind of

6:04

connecting to a large database that may

6:06

have already existed.

6:07

>> Is it fair to say that it's also a much

6:09

more unforgiving environment where

6:12

mistakes are potentially much much more

6:16

consequential?

6:17

>> Absolutely. So of course you're dealing

6:19

with human life in a lot of physical

6:20

operations and that's an area for

6:22

tremendous impact. So if you can build

6:24

safety systems that keep workers safe,

6:26

that's a great thing. But you also have

6:28

to be careful that you don't somehow

6:29

introduce risk into the into the

6:31

picture. Um there are other sides of

6:33

that too which is like these are digital

6:35

technologies so we want to make sure

6:36

they're hardened from a cyber

6:38

perspective like they're not introducing

6:39

cyber security risk but really

6:41

practically um the physical world is a

6:44

pretty dangerous place. Think about a

6:45

construction job site, right? There's a

6:48

lot of like earthmoving equipment

6:50

multi-tonon, right? Like really

6:51

dangerous stuff. It's kind of low

6:53

visibility. Um and so you know the

6:55

operators that are are operating that

6:57

equipment are taking some risk. The

6:59

people on the site are taking a lot of

7:00

risk. So it's inherently a risky

7:03

environment and our question has been

7:05

can we find ways to make it less risky

7:07

using data. So we see that the risk as

7:10

the opportunity as opposed to the

7:11

challenge.

7:12

>> All right. So you alluded to to some of

7:13

this but um for contextual awareness

7:16

early in this conversation uh maybe give

7:18

us a 60cond on on on what sensor does.

7:22

>> Yeah. So Samsara is a technology company

7:25

serving the world of physical

7:27

operations. So think about those

7:28

construction companies, the energy

7:30

utilities, the supply chain and

7:31

logistics companies that power the

7:33

planet. Uh we help digitize their

7:35

operation. So that's a combination of

7:37

hardware. So think uh GPS trackers, dash

7:40

cameras, asset trackers, all kinds of

7:42

different devices. Uh cloud services to

7:45

ingest all the data and then now AI and

7:48

applications to really close the loop,

7:50

right? to help people take some kind of

7:52

action or ideally automate the action

7:54

that's needed. Um what we found is it's

7:57

helpful to start with just tangible real

7:59

world problems and then expand over

8:01

time. So where we started was around

8:03

fleets of vehicles almost all of these

8:05

industries that have you know tens of

8:07

thousands of vehicles that they need to

8:09

perform their work but uh over time

8:11

we've expanded now into those frontline

8:13

operations and we're able to fuse all

8:15

this data together from different

8:16

sources on our platform third party

8:18

sources and and unlock tremendous

8:21

amounts of value for the customer.

8:22

>> Okay. And uh you just crossed two

8:24

billion in AR is that is that correct?

8:27

>> That's right. with uh you're a

8:29

profitable company growing at 30%. Is

8:32

that that's correct the right metrics?

8:34

Okay. Just a beautiful beautiful

8:36

company. Any other metrics you can share

8:38

about the the kind of the volume of uh

8:40

data points you're seeing or just to

8:42

give people a sense for the scale of the

8:44

of the company?

8:46

>> Yeah. Um so on the data points side of

8:48

things, these are numbers that feel

8:50

abstract even to me and I live them

8:51

every day. But we're talking about 25

8:53

trillion data points. GPS, video,

8:56

thirdparty API integrations, all kinds

8:58

of data flowing into the system.

9:00

Millions and millions of vehicles, for

9:01

example. Uh we're talking about, you

9:03

know, millions of frontline workers that

9:05

are using our apps every day. Um and in

9:08

terms of impact, that's the other sort

9:10

of set of data points we look at, which

9:11

is like, well, how is all this

9:13

technology having impact in the world?

9:14

Uh we believe we helped prevent about

9:17

380,000 car crashes, uh you know, road

9:19

accidents in the last year. That's

9:21

meaningful to us because as engineers

9:23

and product builders, we are able to

9:25

have like significant impact in the

9:26

world this way. Uh we've helped uh avoid

9:29

the emission of billions of pounds of

9:31

CO2 by helping do things like optimize

9:33

routes and reducing you know engine

9:35

idling things that seem simple but uh

9:38

you technologically simple perhaps but

9:40

the execution matters a lot. What's cool

9:42

is you see that real world impact. Yeah,

9:44

that that's a crazy number. 380,000 and

9:47

that's because uh you're able to detect

9:50

uh whether uh a driver can get sleepy or

9:54

that kind of stuff.

9:55

>> You got it. Yeah. So there's so many

9:56

different factors that produce risk. And

9:59

you know, we're very excited about

10:00

autonomy and robo taxis and everything

10:02

that we're seeing sort of on the

10:03

frontiers, but there are a lot of these

10:05

industries like um in heavy duty

10:07

trucking or construction, people work

10:09

very long shift. Um you know, maybe

10:11

they've been out in the field for 10 12

10:14

hours, it's been hot and so they're

10:15

exhausted. So you know, fatigue is

10:17

definitely one of them. U you also tend

10:19

to see more accidents in general at

10:21

night, right? Because the roads are less

10:23

visible. you see accidents in foggy

10:25

conditions after it snows or rains,

10:27

things like that. So, we're able to help

10:29

prevent a lot of risk by warning the

10:31

driver of when we see, you know, kind of

10:33

the risk increasing. We can provide some

10:35

real-time feedback and that helps them

10:38

be much more alert, much more aware. And

10:40

we can also coach away some of the bad

10:42

habits that people develop. Um, this is

10:44

an interesting stat, but in the US,

10:46

approximately 10% of people don't

10:48

regularly wear their seatelt. And that,

10:50

uh, varies by state, it varies by

10:51

industry, but that's like one of the

10:53

biggest things you can do to improve

10:55

your risk outcome is just simply put on

10:57

the seat belt. And it makes sense

10:59

because sometimes people are doing a

11:00

quick trip or that, you know, they're

11:02

distracted. But that little reminder

11:04

helps save lives, right? So that's one

11:06

simple one. Putting down your mobile

11:07

phone is the other one, right? When you

11:09

take a look at your mobile phone, like

11:11

lots of people have this habit. um your

11:13

your car if you're driving can move the

11:15

length of a football field and that is

11:18

hard to think because you're like I'm

11:19

just taking a quick look to see what

11:20

that message was about but then you look

11:22

up and you've moved 100 yards, right?

11:24

That's the kind of risk avoidance that

11:26

we can create with real-time alerting.

11:28

>> Okay, great. I'd love to spend a few

11:30

minutes on on your entrepreneurial story

11:32

uh leading to the creation of the

11:33

company which I believe was Stanford to

11:36

MIT to Merke uh Moroi.

11:40

>> Yeah. This is like walk us through like

11:41

how it all came about. You started the

11:44

first company as a student or right

11:46

after your PhD.

11:47

>> That that's correct. Um actually during

11:49

our PhD. So my co-founder John and I we

11:51

met at MIT as PhD students uh over 20

11:53

years ago. I I now cap it because we're

11:55

just old. Uh but it was it was a fun

11:58

sort of research project that we worked

11:59

on which was um this was around the time

12:01

that Wi-Fi was emerging as a new

12:03

technology. We built a uh research

12:05

project called roofnet. We covered

12:07

essentially the city of Cambridge, the

12:09

area between MIT and Harvard with free

12:11

Wi-Fi in the early 2000s. So that was

12:13

really exciting. It's like a hands-on

12:15

kind of very practical research project.

12:17

We did a bunch of academic research on

12:19

routing protocols and you know how to

12:20

build the network. Um but the first

12:22

company Moroi came out of that project

12:25

which was we thought it was tremendously

12:27

cool this idea that Wi-Fi could connect

12:29

so many people just incredibly useful.

12:31

We wanted to help other people build big

12:33

networks. And so we essentially took

12:36

that research um and and now I would use

12:38

the word distill like we condensed it

12:40

down to uh you know run in a box that

12:43

other people could build networks out of

12:44

and then we started essentially making

12:46

that product available. So that was

12:48

Moroi. Um to be honest we kind of

12:50

thought of it as a project like we

12:52

weren't even thinking of it as a

12:53

company. Uh we kind of bootstrapped the

12:56

business in Boston. We ended up moving

12:57

to California. Um and it was fascinating

13:01

because this is 2006 like 20 years ago.

13:03

Wi-Fi was a brand new kind of naent

13:05

technology and there were some real

13:08

challenges, right? How do you do guest

13:09

access? How do you do networks at scale?

13:12

How do you deal with people starting to

13:13

use YouTube which was brand new back

13:15

then? Like hard to imagine, right? Um

13:17

but that kind of exposed us to how fun

13:19

it was to solve real problems. And um we

13:22

had a huge, you know, kind of deep

13:24

background in networking. We had a lot

13:26

of friends from grad school that we

13:27

recruited to start that company. And so

13:29

we got off the ground quickly. we

13:30

started seeing these devices get out in

13:32

the world and Moroi ended up kind of

13:34

just growing and growing and growing. It

13:36

was doubling in revenue every year. Um

13:38

so that was the beginning of our

13:39

entrepreneurial journey. It was a little

13:40

bit of an accidental start.

13:42

>> And when you started Samsara, you know,

13:43

as opposed to to what you did in Moro,

13:45

that was a brand new area where u as far

13:49

as could tell from what I read like you

13:51

guys didn't have a prior background in

13:53

that. So like how does one become an

13:55

expert as an entrepreneur in a domain

13:58

that they don't have a background in?

14:00

>> Yeah, you're you're very right. We had

14:01

never spent time like in a loading dock

14:03

or warehouse or like in a construction

14:05

yard. Um but we were always fascinated

14:07

by them and I think that was really the

14:09

key is uh this is just like nerdy

14:10

curiosity of like well how does

14:12

electrical grid really work? Right? I

14:14

have an electrical engineering

14:15

background. I was just always kind of

14:16

like fascinated by this. um or like

14:19

supply chain if you're just curious

14:21

about like well that Amazon package like

14:23

how how far did it travel like you know

14:25

where where were the goods stored like

14:26

all of those kinds of questions were

14:28

fascinating to us and um similar to Maro

14:32

we weren't intending to start this

14:33

company right out of Cisco like we had

14:35

been kind of on this pretty intense run

14:38

uh but the curiosity kind of got the

14:39

better of us and we started reading lots

14:41

of books about this and you know like

14:44

just trying to learn about the world um

14:46

the challenge with physical operation

14:48

though is you can't learn about it in a

14:50

book like you actually need to go on

14:51

site and to do that you need a reason

14:54

you need an excuse essentially and so we

14:56

said well maybe we can be helpful to

14:58

these industries right because um like I

15:01

was saying earlier it's the

15:02

infrastructure of our plan so massive

15:04

there have to be interesting problems to

15:06

solve there so we kind of started this

15:08

company market first very steep learning

15:10

curve and I have to say as a second time

15:12

through entrepreneur I'm really glad we

15:15

had that experience because had we gone

15:17

back and it we probably would have

15:19

overweighted our prior experience and

15:21

said, "Hey, this is how it's done or

15:23

this is how we did it at Moroi." Uh,

15:25

with Samsara, it's a different customer.

15:27

We serve the world of operations much

15:29

more than the kind of technical buyer.

15:31

Um, we sell direct, so we interact

15:34

directly with our customers versus via

15:35

channel. And that reset was enough for

15:38

us to kind of go back to beginner's

15:40

mind, which I think is also very

15:41

important for most companies.

15:43

>> Okay. All right. Thank you for all of

15:44

this.

15:45

uh let's deep dive uh into the product

15:50

itself. So uh based on what we've said

15:53

so far um you have a hardware layer

15:57

which is the sensors. So uh just to use

16:00

an analogy and and and stop me if that

16:03

doesn't seem right but that would be the

16:04

the sensors so the ears and the eyes.

16:07

>> Then you have a software layer

16:10

>> I guess now with AI which would be the

16:13

the brain. Mhm.

16:14

>> And you just added recently and we're

16:17

going to talk a bunch about that you

16:19

added an energetic layer which would be

16:22

uh the the arms for the action. Is that

16:24

is that directionally uh how you think

16:26

about it?

16:27

>> Yeah. And I would say um you know every

16:30

single one of those layers has some

16:32

connective tissue attached to it. So if

16:34

you think about the hardware, I've got

16:35

hardware on my desk of course and so

16:37

this would be an example of one of our

16:38

sensors.

16:39

>> So what is this? What is this?

16:40

>> Uh this is what we call an asset tag.

16:42

So, you could put this on a piece of

16:44

construction equipment, right? Um, it's

16:46

got an accelerometer in there, so it can

16:48

tell, you know, how much it's been

16:49

moving. It's got a Bluetooth radio

16:51

that's a little bit more powerful than

16:53

what you've probably used on the

16:54

consumer side. So, you know, your

16:56

AirPods have Bluetooth. This is a

16:57

industrial-grade Bluetooth. Um, it's got

16:59

a battery inside and then it's built to

17:01

be super tough. So, you can like beat

17:03

this thing up. You can drive over it

17:04

with the truck and u, you know, it'll

17:06

it'll continue to operate that layer. It

17:09

has hardware, but also has firmware

17:11

that's running it on it on it. It's got

17:13

network connectivity. I mentioned

17:15

Bluetooth. So, this connects to the

17:16

millions of Samsara gateways, tens of

17:19

millions of phones and handsets that can

17:21

act as kind of a relay point for us. And

17:23

then we we're able to get that to the

17:25

cloud in a secure way. So, that's the

17:26

data capture side, right? Going from

17:29

motion like the accelerometer into the

17:31

Bluetooth layer into the cloud. Um, but

17:34

from there, you need to organize it

17:36

because like you got signals coming from

17:38

all over. uh you need to be able to like

17:40

operate on it in a pretty methodical way

17:43

and that's what's going to feed the AI

17:44

because if you give the AI pretty noisy

17:46

data you'll get you know it's like less

17:48

signal noise ratio so we need to get get

17:50

clean data in um and then to use your

17:52

analogy that's the brain right like

17:54

that's where we we store it we operate

17:56

on it um you can surface those insights

17:59

to the end user or the agentic piece is

18:02

you can just take an action right um

18:04

maybe change a safety setting right like

18:06

say hey we're gonna ask our entire fleet

18:08

in uh New York because it's raining to

18:11

increase the following distance versus

18:13

on a bright sunny day, right? Um that

18:16

kind of change would have normally

18:18

required a human in the loop. We're now

18:20

finding that the AI can do it very

18:22

consistently and uh can do it at scale

18:25

that people wouldn't be able to get to

18:26

because you'd need someone just sitting

18:28

there monitoring all the settings for

18:29

thousands of vehicles. Not very

18:31

practical. So, it just doesn't get done.

18:32

And that's the maybe the arms the kind

18:34

of action side of things.

18:36

>> Okay, great. All right. So that's the

18:37

overall architecture. Um, so going back

18:40

to that hardware layer. So you showed us

18:43

an asset tracker. Uh, you said it

18:45

connects via Bluetooth. That's

18:49

Bluetooth. Uh, it's been a while since I

18:51

looked at at at all the things, but like

18:53

it's not like Laura one and that that

18:55

kind of uh frameworks and

18:58

>> Yes, this is it's Bluetooth low energy.

19:01

uh if you're familiar with the BLE that

19:03

you you know would see on your uh

19:05

fitness device or your AirPods, that

19:07

kind of thing. So, uh Bluetooth has come

19:09

a long way over the years, it's it's

19:11

kind of gotten added on to and it's it's

19:13

picked up a lot of the great

19:15

characteristics that many of these other

19:16

standards had. So, we can get a lot of

19:18

range out of these trackers. And then we

19:20

add a layer on top of that of security.

19:22

How do we make sure that uh we preserve

19:24

the privacy and the security of the the

19:26

the tag that it's being applied to?

19:28

>> And it's powered by battery. You said

19:30

like how much autonomy would a tracker

19:32

have? Like how long does it last?

19:34

>> Uh this specific one would last about uh

19:37

3 years. We have others that last 6 plus

19:40

years. Uh we even have a really small

19:42

form factor one. I've got these on my

19:44

desk as well. And I don't know if you

19:45

can see them, but this is like a

19:46

tracking label. So we're talking about a

19:48

sticker.

19:49

>> That's the one you just launched in

19:50

Vegas a few weeks ago. Okay.

19:52

>> Exactly. So these last about uh 45 days

19:55

or so. Um so long enough for shipments

19:57

to kind of go one way. And then these

19:59

are disposable. So, um, they don't have

20:01

lithium-ion batteries in them, for

20:02

example. So, you can just, uh, peel

20:04

them, stick them, track them, and then

20:06

dispose of them.

20:07

>> But, show them again on camera if if you

20:09

will.

20:10

>> Yeah. This is a

20:11

>> So, this So, this is literally a

20:13

sticker. So, what's what's in it?

20:16

>> What's in it? Um, it's hard to make out

20:18

on camera, but there's basically some

20:20

batteries and then, of course, the

20:22

Bluetooth chip, right, as running our

20:24

firmware. Um and that is how it it

20:26

beakens up essentially its signal of

20:28

where it is.

20:29

>> How are you able to get such a flat and

20:32

small um like form factor? Is that is

20:34

that where the innovation is like just

20:36

miniaturization or like what what's the

20:38

I

20:38

>> I would say for us it's systems

20:40

innovation. We did not build the

20:42

battery. We don't make the silicon or

20:43

the chip but we work with partners to

20:46

integrate all this together. And then we

20:48

have the network which is essentially

20:50

think about um you know the millions of

20:52

vehicles on the road all the people

20:54

running the Samsara stack they form a

20:56

community and relay signals for each

20:58

other. Um and you've actually probably

21:00

seen this in the consumer side with the

21:02

Apple Air Tag kind of that concept of an

21:04

ecosystem. We apply basically the

21:06

industrial strength version of that.

21:08

>> Okay. Very cool stuff. So what else do

21:10

you have at the hardware layer? Uh I

21:12

read some more vehicle gateways.

21:14

What what what does this what do those

21:16

do?

21:16

>> Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't have all

21:18

the hardware that we make on my desk,

21:19

but the vehicle gateway, think of it as

21:21

a black box that goes on a truck or a

21:23

piece of construction equipment or

21:24

basically any kind of moving asset. Um,

21:27

that is a a different type of collector,

21:29

right? So, it collects diagnostic

21:31

information from the engine computers

21:34

and that's everything from uh you know,

21:36

how much fuel is it consuming to does it

21:38

have fault codes to uh was the driver's

21:41

foot on the accelerator or the brake.

21:43

That's all there on the diagnostic port.

21:45

So we're able to ingest that

21:46

information.

21:47

>> It's like a long time series of some

21:49

sort.

21:49

>> Yes. Uh well it's we have to collect it

21:51

and organize it but it forms a long time

21:53

series of many many different signals.

21:55

And even something that sounds as simple

21:57

as a fault code really there's a lot of

21:59

depth and richness to that too because

22:01

if you read the fault codes very

22:03

carefully you can understand very

22:05

specific dynamics about different kinds

22:07

of engines and fuel types and you know

22:10

air pressures and so on. So we we take

22:12

all of that in. Um we have

22:16

>> uh and then you have uh AI dash cams.

22:19

What are those?

22:20

>> That's right. So I think you're familiar

22:22

with dash cams. You've seen them in

22:23

Ubers, right? Like um and super

22:25

valuable, useful for drivers because if

22:27

something happens on the road, you can

22:29

exonerate yourself very quickly. Um so

22:31

we have a connected version of that. So

22:33

it records HD video, it has some

22:34

storage, it's got the ability to send

22:36

that to the cloud. Um and we run AI

22:38

models at the edge. So we can do things

22:41

like um provide you feedback to increase

22:43

your following distance like I said

22:44

based on the weather condition. Um now

22:47

we're also seeing the driver side of

22:49

that camera. So it's like you know

22:50

outward and inward facing. The driver

22:53

side of the camera can do things like

22:54

detect fatigue or mobile phone usage

22:56

provide real-time feedback to the

22:58

driver. And the idea is they can

23:00

self-correct uh self coach and that is

23:03

like the aha is it breaks the the cycle

23:05

or the bad feedback loop of I'm going to

23:07

look at my phone. If you get a sort of

23:09

like audio alert in the moment and it

23:12

happens many many times you tend to

23:14

break the habit because it's sort of

23:15

negative reinforcement. Um that was a

23:18

huge breakthrough for us um six seven

23:20

years ago uh as we introduced AI at the

23:22

edge and now we're kind of going further

23:24

with that concept finding other forms of

23:27

risk and so on

23:28

>> right because it used to be a safety

23:29

device and now it's an interface uh that

23:33

the driver can can communicate with the

23:35

AI.

23:36

>> Exactly. Because now that you've got the

23:37

technology in the cab, what else could

23:39

you do with it? Could you give the

23:41

driver uh driver a briefing in the

23:43

morning as they start their shift about

23:44

where all they're going to go and

23:46

traffic conditions and weather? Um, we

23:48

have a little button. They can use that

23:50

to uh, you know, call dispatch, for

23:52

example, and say, "Hey, I'm going to be

23:53

late because I need to uh go pick up

23:56

some tools or something like that." So,

23:57

the that connectivity layer just got

23:59

enhanced with the presence of all this

24:01

technology

24:02

>> and all of this. And I know you have

24:03

other sensors for like temperature and

24:05

that kind of stuff. uh all of this is is

24:07

built by you. So you mentioned not all

24:09

the components but like all of this is

24:11

is propos

24:14

the system and it's designed as an open

24:16

system by the way because a lot of these

24:18

newer assets they have uh APIs

24:21

effectively right so a lot of newer

24:22

trucks for example we can do a

24:24

cloud-tocloud connection so you don't

24:25

necessarily need the black box but you

24:27

want the data and you want it like

24:29

organized and and seamless with all of

24:31

your other assets uh because typically

24:33

in operations you'll have Ford trucks

24:36

and GM trucks and Caterpillar and

24:37

Freightlininer and all kinds of other

24:38

equipment coming together. Um, so we act

24:41

as that orchestration layer. Uh, so the

24:43

hardware is very much part of the story,

24:45

but we also have software in interfaces

24:48

coming into the system.

24:49

>> All right. So you got all of this and

24:51

then uh you move it to the cloud and

24:54

then uh what do you have there? Like you

24:56

have a gigantic data warehouse and like

25:00

ETL kind of data transformation. Uh is

25:04

that how it works?

25:05

>> Um that's right. From an ingestion

25:06

perspective, I think you got it. Um, so

25:09

just massive amounts of data storage.

25:11

Uh, this is all kind of sitting in

25:12

modern hyperscaler cloud. So it's not

25:14

that we have like one big warehouse/data

25:16

center, but um, you know, pretty large

25:19

system. Um, so we ingest the data, we're

25:22

storing it and organizing it, and then

25:24

we like basically have a bunch of

25:26

processes that are that are um

25:28

automating like sort of automatically

25:30

working on top of that data as well. And

25:32

then you have the UIUX collaboration

25:35

interface where you're a customer

25:37

whether you're a dispatcher or a truck

25:39

driver or uh the business owner like

25:41

everybody has access.

25:43

>> That's right. And and there many

25:44

different personas. So you named a few

25:46

of the the key ones. Um the drivers in

25:48

the front line are are very much like

25:50

just regular users of the system. Um you

25:52

do have the dispatchers. You'll have

25:54

other people who'd be like safety

25:55

managers or uh in certain cases if they

25:58

have to do paperwork like uh essentially

26:00

compliance managers and but you also

26:02

have people that do maintenance for

26:04

example and so they want to know what is

26:06

the health of all these assets in the

26:07

field which truck will I need to

26:09

maintain at the end of the day when it

26:10

comes back to the yard. Um and then you

26:13

do have the executives and all these

26:14

other business uh minded people who want

26:16

to know well did we show up on time

26:18

right like what is the efficiency of our

26:20

fleet and how do we do this at scale

26:22

many of our customers actually most of

26:24

our customers are large enterprises so

26:26

think operations have thousands tens of

26:28

thousands of people and tens of

26:30

thousands of assets and so on

26:32

>> as a thought uh so selling to a bunch of

26:34

different personas especially in like

26:35

more traditional industries uh

26:37

especially as you've added this AI layer

26:40

recently how do you go about it like how

26:42

do you convince people in you know

26:45

typically non technology industry to to

26:47

buy?

26:48

>> Well, you know, I think the the great

26:50

part about this technology is very

26:51

tangible and um it's the kind of thing

26:54

that when you see it, you get it very

26:55

quickly. So, what we do is we tend to go

26:57

on site, we will demo the technology and

26:59

do trials. So, you can easily these are

27:01

plug-and-play so you can easily try it

27:03

out in your environment, in your

27:04

industry. And um like I said, there's so

27:07

many challenges in physical operations.

27:09

It tends to never just be one thing. So

27:11

yes, we want to reduce the number of

27:12

accidents we get into, but I think we're

27:15

also like leaving our trucks idling a

27:16

lot because it's just a bad habit or

27:18

we're leaving tools behind at the job

27:20

site and we'd like to get those back cuz

27:22

we spend millions of dollars replacing

27:23

them. So we will often find multiple

27:26

challenges like that. Then we

27:27

demonstrate to them at small scale like

27:29

maybe a team or you know a region or or

27:31

something like that that this works and

27:33

when they see it they get it

27:34

immediately. These are people who are

27:36

experts in their industry. So they would

27:38

say, "I immediately see the value or the

27:40

ROI." Uh, but they have to see it in

27:42

that kind of tangible way. They're not

27:43

just buying it because it's AI or big

27:46

data or something like that. They're

27:47

like, "No, if this solves problems for

27:49

us in our construction business, great.

27:51

Let's do it."

27:52

>> And when you think about the long-term

27:53

defensibility of the the business, uh,

27:56

especially in a world where models may

27:59

or may not commoditize, I think most

28:02

people would say they are commoditizing.

28:04

Mhm.

28:04

>> Is it the data layer that you that you

28:07

feel protects sensara or how do you

28:10

think about modes?

28:12

>> Yeah, there are a few things. Um, we see

28:14

whether it commoditizes or not, these

28:16

models are incredible, right? And uh the

28:18

amount of value they can unlock with

28:20

their ability to ingest the data and

28:21

reason is is awesome. Um, so we're very

28:24

excited about what we're seeing on that

28:26

front. Um, the operational data that I

28:28

was talking about, the physical world

28:30

kind of digitization side of thing is

28:32

where we come in, right? These are not

28:34

the tokens you're going to find online.

28:35

Like you can't crawl Reddit and find out

28:37

about what happened on a construction

28:38

site, right? Nor can you do, you know,

28:41

test time reasoning about it. You can't

28:43

just you you can simulate all kinds of

28:45

environments, but really what our

28:46

customers need to know is like what was

28:48

going on in that specific environment at

28:50

that time, right? Um that requires this

28:54

interplay of hardware and software, but

28:55

also the change management. How do you

28:57

get this out into the field and that

28:59

partnership? So that's a unique area for

29:02

us that we focus on. Um this is what

29:04

we've been doing for the last decade

29:05

plus and it takes a lot of work. I have

29:07

to I have to emphasize that too is like

29:09

we get out in the field with our

29:11

customers, understand their business and

29:13

work backwards. So it's not something

29:15

that can purely be like just you know uh

29:18

one click uh deployed. It really

29:20

requires a kind of a nuanced approach.

29:22

>> Do you have a concept of a data network

29:25

effect or data flywheel across

29:28

customers? So does something that you

29:31

learn in the context of a dash cam with

29:33

uh customer X in geography Y also apply

29:37

to customer Z in a different geography

29:39

like in terms of learnings. uh very

29:42

much. So, you know, on the dash cam side

29:44

of things, the key insight there is, um,

29:46

while these may be all different

29:47

companies, we're all driving on the same

29:49

roads, right? Um, the Samsara system,

29:52

uh, in a given day, we're driving 99% of

29:55

the US roads, usually multiple times a

29:57

day. So, you can use that of course on

29:59

the risk side. So, we can understand

30:01

where are the risky intersections or

30:03

where weather conditions bad and and how

30:05

do we warn other drivers. So, there's a

30:06

network effect there. Um, but there are

30:09

other sort of uh side effects, right? Um

30:11

because we drive all the roads and we

30:13

have cameras, we can tell you where all

30:14

the potholes are, right? And that is

30:16

super useful for the city. So like this,

30:19

you know, city of Chicago for example,

30:21

they want to know which potholes are,

30:23

you know, happen after the winter

30:25

weather season. What order should we go

30:26

after the men in terms of severity? You

30:29

can use the camera data for that, the

30:31

accelerometer data from the GPS tracker

30:33

that I mentioned. So every time you see

30:35

that big bump in the road, um you look

30:37

at the video. And the cool part about

30:39

that is not only do you know where the

30:41

pothole is, but we can see what's

30:42

happening to it over time. Is it getting

30:44

bigger? Is it, you know, cracking? All

30:46

that kind of stuff. So that is another

30:48

sort of data network effect that we get.

30:50

And then maybe the third, since we

30:52

talked about asset trackers early, you

30:54

have these millions of vehicles driving

30:55

around. A Bluetooth tracker on its own

30:58

probably doesn't get picked up, right?

31:00

Because think about a construction site.

31:02

It could be acres and acres of land. But

31:05

if you have, you know, one company

31:07

delivering building materials, another

31:08

company performing construction, the

31:10

electrical contractor, one of those guys

31:13

may pick it up and that is another

31:14

network effect that you get with

31:16

millions of these vehicles and then tens

31:17

of millions of handsets like the mobile

31:19

devices. Uh it's a incredible kind of

31:22

mesh network that forms.

31:23

>> All right. So going back to the the

31:25

product and and the eye stuff. So you

31:27

mentioned uh edge and cloud. Where do

31:30

you guys do what in what proportion? We

31:34

could spend an hour just talking about

31:35

where where what is going on. Um if I

31:38

had to generalize, I would say at the

31:39

edge we're typically running inference

31:41

and data collection. So the data

31:43

collection of course gets us the

31:44

training data. The inference is

31:45

essentially running models where we have

31:47

the weights and we send them down from

31:49

the cloud and they're running at many

31:50

frames per second at the edge. And this

31:53

is how we do the the kind of real-time

31:55

or the low latency detections and closed

31:57

loop alerting to the driver. Um the

32:00

reason we do it at the edge is is

32:02

practical, right? So sometimes you don't

32:04

have a great sell signal. Uh many of our

32:06

customers are operating in the middle of

32:07

nowhere. Um and then also the latency

32:10

matters. If you can get uh feedback to

32:12

the driver, you know, really very soon

32:15

after something happened, it's much more

32:17

likely they'll they'll change that

32:19

behavior. So uh again very kind of

32:21

practical architecture for us. It's

32:23

worked really well um in terms of how

32:25

robust it is and how it holds up. Um but

32:27

that being said, it's not fixed. So if

32:29

that means we need to do some inference

32:31

in the cloud, we are set up to do that.

32:33

We have real-time tunnels that that

32:34

connect these devices.

32:35

>> Presumably what you run at the edge

32:38

would be smaller models. Are those um

32:42

your your

32:43

traditional quote unquote uh

32:46

convolutional neural networks that are

32:49

trained for images like a very specific

32:51

tasks versus um you know other forms of

32:55

like more modern generative AI. There

32:58

are lots of different model types. So,

33:00

uh, convolutional neural networks are

33:02

very much where we started. That's

33:03

basically from the imageet era of like,

33:06

okay, can we detect a mobile phone,

33:08

right? Um, from there these models have

33:10

become more sophisticated. So, we run

33:12

basically a model backbone with many

33:14

different classifiers and and heads or

33:17

attention heads. So, um, basically once

33:19

we see a device in somebody's hand, what

33:21

is it? Is it a phone? Is it a vape pen?

33:23

Is it a sandwich? um you know what is

33:26

the activity that's going on with it.

33:27

That's not a single shot detection. It

33:29

it tends to be a little more nuanced

33:30

than that. Same thing when we look

33:32

outward. Uh we have cameras that point

33:35

out at the road. We have some cameras

33:36

that point at the sides or or to the

33:39

back and we're trying to do things like

33:41

uh estimate depth, right? So, am I

33:43

likely to run into a lamp post or a

33:47

mailbox or something like that? That's a

33:49

different kind of model than like a what

33:51

a CNN would be able to do. And then what

33:53

has um uh generative AI fundamentally

33:56

changed for for you guys? Um is that

34:00

video reasoning? What what what do you

34:02

use for for what?

34:04

>> We use generative in a few different

34:06

ways. I would say if we think about the

34:08

overall class of models, yes, you can

34:10

now reason about video. So uh what would

34:12

have required a human in the loop

34:14

reviewer um or you know and that's the

34:17

kind of work that might have been done

34:18

overseas in lowerc cost geos or

34:20

something like that you can now do at

34:22

much more volume um in the cloud using

34:24

these models. So uh for example if

34:27

someone slams on the brakes right while

34:28

they're driving their truck um the the

34:31

naive thing to assume is like hey the

34:33

driver was distracted and they they kind

34:35

of woke up. The more nuanced thing is

34:37

that driver might have been avoiding a

34:39

deer or a dog or, you know, some kind of

34:41

uh defensive event. If you can watch

34:43

that as a video clip, you can now say,

34:46

"Hey, we're actually going to give the

34:47

driver some positive feedback because

34:48

they did a really good thing." The VLMs

34:50

are able to effectively do what I just

34:52

said, right? Um, similarly, like if you

34:56

want to understand, did someone run a a

34:58

red light, right? These things happen.

35:01

you need to have a pretty sophisticated

35:03

model that understands the geometry of

35:05

the road and all the conditions and and

35:07

so on. So that would be like a a JEPA

35:09

style model for example. So we're able

35:11

to use a few different model families.

35:13

On the generative side of like actually

35:15

being able to create video that's also

35:17

very interesting because from a coaching

35:19

perspective most of our customers are

35:21

bottlenecked on the number of humanto

35:23

human interactions they can have. Like

35:25

for me to sit down with you Matt and say

35:27

hey we need to talk about your driving

35:28

from last week. We could probably do

35:30

that for a small fraction, but I can't

35:32

do that for every driver. It's not

35:34

practical. Um, you may have seen like,

35:36

you know, AI generated avatars like AI

35:38

generated people. We can generate a

35:41

coach and that can resemble the VP of

35:43

safety from the company or, you know, a

35:45

celebrity or who knows, you know,

35:47

whatever the customer wants, but that

35:49

can be a very effective way to deliver

35:51

end of week coaching. So, that's a form

35:53

of generative video that frankly we

35:56

couldn't have even dreamed of five years

35:57

ago. Do you build some of your own

36:00

models or do you take stuff off the

36:02

shelf and customize it? Are you an open

36:04

source shop? Are you in OpenAI anthropic

36:06

shop, Gemini shop? Um what what do you

36:09

use?

36:10

>> We are universally accepting of models

36:12

in the sense of there's so much

36:13

innovation happening. Um so yes, the

36:15

frontier labs are doing great work,

36:17

right? The and we'll use multiple models

36:19

from different labs uh simultaneously.

36:22

Um the open source models are are pretty

36:24

compelling. I think it's having its

36:25

moment now. But we've been seeing u and

36:28

this is really I think from the academic

36:29

communities open source and really open

36:31

weights models really give you a lot of

36:34

operational freedom. So we can do things

36:35

like distill them uh for example to

36:38

shrink them down to fit on a device. Um

36:40

so we use models like that and then

36:42

there's others that we train from

36:44

scratch. Those might be smaller models

36:46

call it tens of millions of parameters

36:47

but very specific to something we need

36:49

to do in the field.

36:50

>> All right let's talk about agents. So

36:52

that's the that was the big launch that

36:55

you guys had at the um your Beyond 2026

36:59

conference in Las Vegas just at the end

37:02

of June. So less than a month ago now.

37:05

Uh and you launched agent studio. So

37:08

maybe walk us through this and I think

37:10

in the past you describe a progression

37:11

from uh connecting operations to

37:14

understanding them to taking action. So

37:16

how does that all fit together?

37:18

>> Yeah. Well, a few years ago, we did

37:20

introduce LLMs into our product. We

37:22

called it the Samsar Assistant. So,

37:24

think of it as like a chatbot tied to

37:25

your operational data. Um, it became

37:27

very popular. We saw customers asking

37:30

all kinds of, you know, practical

37:31

questions like who are my safest drivers

37:33

or which trucks need maintenance, things

37:35

like that. Um, those tended to be, you

37:37

know, single turn or maybe like a few

37:39

turn interactions like you just go back

37:41

and forth with the the chatbot window on

37:42

the side. The breakthrough that of

37:45

course happened last year is these

37:46

agents can operate over much longer time

37:48

horizons. So instead of an AI responding

37:50

to a question in a second, it can like

37:52

go do some work on its own, develop a

37:54

plan and go after it. We've seen the

37:57

impact of that in the coding world, but

37:58

there's also a lot of implication for

38:00

the operational world, right? So um the

38:02

one of the demos I did on stage is we

38:04

have a warranty agent. when it sees a

38:06

fault code, it can basically crack the

38:08

service manual, look at your uh specific

38:12

like OEM negotiated warranty agreements

38:14

and then correlate the two and say,

38:16

"Yes, this specific issue given the age

38:19

or you know the number of miles that

38:20

have been driven on this vehicle is

38:22

actually covered under warranty." Then

38:24

it can open a work order, put in the

38:25

steps and also tell you, hey, do any of

38:28

the other trucks have that issue? That

38:30

is a, you know, like what would have

38:32

been like an hour or two of human labor

38:34

that we've been able to automate down to

38:35

like under a minute. That is the huge

38:38

kind of breakthrough unlock. And I I

38:40

just went very deep on warranties. But

38:42

you can see how that would apply to

38:44

reporting, how it would apply to, you

38:46

know, briefing a driver at the beginning

38:47

of the day. You can use in all kinds of

38:49

creative ways.

38:50

>> It sounds like u for all perhaps the

38:53

obvious reasons you're starting with um

38:56

non-risky kind of use cases. Is that is

38:59

that how you guys think about it? Like

39:01

something where if you make the wrong

39:02

warranty claim, you know, it's not

39:04

great, but uh

39:06

>> yeah,

39:06

>> you know, nobody dies.

39:08

>> Yeah. Um I I think of it as we're just

39:10

starting with the most practical areas

39:11

we can have impact. The the reality, by

39:13

the way, is most of those warranty

39:15

claims just are unfulfilled, right?

39:17

Nobody has the time to go do all that

39:19

work that I just mentioned and and do

39:20

the paperwork. So that's an area of of

39:23

tremendous interest for our customers is

39:25

you know hey I have all this extra work

39:27

that I know would be useful but I'm not

39:29

able to get to so how do I do that? Um

39:32

and then you know over time I think the

39:34

idea will be how do we really like

39:36

autonomously

39:38

run parts of the operation for the

39:39

customer if that's like replanning the

39:41

route for example before uh every

39:44

morning shift we now have the technology

39:46

to do that and again it's not super

39:48

risky but it requires a lot of business

39:51

judgment of you know that route actually

39:53

is run by this person because they have

39:55

a relationship they've been you know

39:57

seeing that customer for 10 years you

40:00

need to have all that context So in that

40:02

sense we are starting with things where

40:04

we know we can have an impact and then

40:05

we're working with customers to figure

40:06

out what else could we do.

40:10

>> You use the word um autonomously. I'm

40:13

I'm I'm always uh fascinated for people

40:16

that that build real agents that work in

40:19

the real world just like you guys do.

40:21

What would you say is the proportion of

40:24

um sort of a gentic reasoning versus

40:26

having some good old you know code

40:29

enough code workflow and rules that's

40:32

built into it for for ultimate success

40:34

like you know ultimately who cares you

40:37

know what what does what as long as it

40:39

works but like what is the recipe to

40:41

make it work is that is a combination or

40:43

are we at a stage where just agent

40:45

reasoning can do so much so that you

40:47

don't need that much like rules built

40:49

into the overall solution

40:50

>> I I think agent reasoning was a huge

40:52

unlock like I said this ability to build

40:54

plans and work over long time horizons

40:56

but you do need to outline what is it

40:59

that I want the agent to do right and

41:00

that is in in some lightweight sense

41:03

like the workflow it's also the

41:05

guardrails like at at what point do you

41:07

say hey agent you should you know ask me

41:09

for some help or agent I don't want you

41:12

to go down that rabbit hole right like

41:13

we we have to kind of keep it on track

41:16

so it's some combination of operational

41:18

context which comes through workflow and

41:20

guardrail

41:21

with also this now kind of new agentic

41:24

reasoning ability. I don't think either

41:27

really works well in sort of isolation

41:29

and the workflow side of things. By the

41:31

way, we had elements of that in our

41:32

product. Um I'll give you a very simple

41:35

example in u in most commercial

41:38

industries there's a walkound inspection

41:40

that you do at the beginning of your

41:41

shift and end of your shift. We see

41:44

about 300 350 million of those a year.

41:47

that has historically just been a

41:49

workflow on a mobile device, right? Like

41:51

you're kind of going step by step,

41:52

taking some pictures, saying something's

41:54

safe. If you combine that with the

41:56

diagnostic information, the location

41:58

information, who last did the check,

42:01

like you know, what was in the picture,

42:02

that is is a huge unlock. So that's kind

42:05

of what we mean by combining these two

42:06

things.

42:07

>> What do you think agents are not able to

42:10

do just yet?

42:11

>> Oh boy, that that ceiling question, it

42:14

changes like, you know, I feel like

42:15

every week. Um, and you there's there's

42:20

some nuance to this. So, for example,

42:21

these new models like the kind of Fable

42:23

5 class and and GPD soul, it's hard to

42:27

figure out where the practical ceiling

42:29

is, but sometimes you do see them go and

42:31

get um distracted or like lost in a loop

42:34

somewhere, right? So, I think there is

42:36

some aspect of like they may find the

42:38

answer eventually, but can they find the

42:40

answer in um 10 seconds or 1 minute or

42:44

even 1 hour, right? So that's one area

42:46

where I think there is still a practical

42:48

ceiling and my guess is as these models

42:50

become more and more powerful more

42:51

sophisticated that will shrink and then

42:54

these algorithms are getting more

42:55

efficient. So maybe the compute combined

42:57

with the algorithm combined with just

42:59

like smarter model architectures will

43:02

make what would have been like a one-day

43:03

task a 1-hour task or you know even

43:06

faster than that. And if you suspend

43:08

disbelief a little bit, what do you

43:10

think you would be able to do

43:13

uh in like a year or two? You know, not

43:15

10 because obviously who knows. Um but

43:18

uh given the progress, so right now

43:20

you're able to do um uh you give the

43:23

example of warranty, you give the

43:25

example of uh sort of pre-planning a day

43:28

>> uh for for a driver. What what else do

43:31

you think you can do in the next year? I

43:34

I think a lot of our ability to predict

43:37

what happens next year or two is by

43:38

looking at what is like barely possible

43:40

now and then what will the sort of um

43:43

cost curves look like or or capability

43:45

curves look like and um something that

43:48

we talked about at our beyond conference

43:50

last month was this idea of a of a

43:53

driver ride along. So, in operations,

43:55

it's quite common to basically have a

43:57

manager sit with you over the course of

43:59

your day, like drive around with you for

44:00

8 hours. And what they're doing is

44:02

they're not looking for, you know, uh,

44:04

how fast you're going. They're looking

44:05

for your habits of like, do you check

44:07

your mirrors, like, you know, are you

44:09

alert and are you aware? That kind of

44:10

thing. That's basically a massive amount

44:12

of, uh, video computation, right? So,

44:14

you can run a tokenizer. It just turns

44:16

into like a lot of compute. You can do

44:19

that today. It's it's pretty expensive

44:21

and costly, but it it works and it's

44:23

doable. We're pretty optimistic that the

44:26

you know cost per million tokens is

44:28

dropping so fast and the capabilities

44:29

are rising that we can deliver that at

44:31

better and better cost over time to our

44:33

customer. So I think in a year or two

44:35

that will be possible and I have to say

44:37

like you know just over last weekend I

44:39

was playing um Sarah which is one of

44:41

those big like wafer scale chip

44:43

companies. they have uh an inference

44:46

model that you can run on their chip

44:47

which is basically Gemma 4 but like

44:49

hyper accelerated like that's a great

44:51

example of like that is nonlinear in

44:55

terms of jump right like what you get

44:56

out of these big models today if you run

44:58

Gemma 4 on your GP you might get like

45:00

100 tokens per second if you have a fast

45:02

card if you run it in their cloud you

45:04

get anywhere from 800 to 1500 tokens per

45:07

second so call it 10x faster um that is

45:11

the kind of thing where it unlocks these

45:13

new use cases that we couldn't get to

45:15

because it would have been too either

45:16

expensive or too slow.

45:18

>> Not to promote the podcast on the

45:20

podcast, but by the time we release this

45:22

uh the prior episode will be precisely

45:24

an episode with Andrew Feldman of Serial

45:26

Brush if anybody missed it

45:29

>> and of and of commercial. I'm I'm glad

45:31

you mentioned the the the ride along

45:33

because I think there's a fascinating

45:35

aspect to uh the whole dash cam almost

45:39

from a

45:41

societal standpoint. uh in in that uh uh

45:46

it could be like an interesting

45:47

blueprint in terms of like how we

45:49

professionally interact with AI uh not

45:52

just when we query it through AI

45:54

chatbots but like having AI live with us

45:57

on a on a on a on a permanent basis. So,

45:59

you know, sort of the obvious question

46:01

is that this there's an element of like

46:03

arguably big brother is watching you.

46:05

You know, AI is watching every single

46:07

move that you make. Um, and you know,

46:09

for your own good, but it's also looking

46:11

at what you may not do well. I'm curious

46:14

about what you've learned from the

46:16

perspective of uh uh making everyone

46:19

happy, if there's such a thing, whether

46:21

that's the the customer, the driver, and

46:23

you know, people for people not ripping

46:26

out the the camera in rage.

46:28

>> Yeah. So, uh, you know, a couple of

46:30

thoughts there. The first is we actually

46:31

do spend a lot of time on the front line

46:33

with drivers and other, you know,

46:35

frontline workers. So, it's very

46:37

important for us to get their

46:38

perspective because they're the primary

46:39

users and and really beneficiaries of

46:41

the system. Something people don't often

46:44

think of is, you know, if you have a

46:45

dash camera, what is it used for? The

46:47

majority use case is actually

46:49

exoneration. So, what I mean by that is

46:51

helping explain what happened if there

46:53

was an accident. Because for example, if

46:55

you are the Home Depot, you're a very

46:57

well-known brand. They're a customer of

46:58

ours. Um, lots of claims, auto claims

47:01

are placed against you because they'll

47:02

say, "Hey, a Home Depot truck backed

47:04

into my car on this highway." Right? And

47:07

that is something that really upsets a

47:09

driver because they'll say, "Look, I was

47:10

doing my job great. Like, I didn't run

47:12

into that guy." Now, you can basically

47:15

produce HD video evidence of where you

47:17

were and if there was an accident, who

47:19

caused it, all that stuff. That's it.

47:22

eliminates all the ambiguity, right?

47:24

Like now you can just resolve it and

47:26

look, if there was an accident, the

47:27

company may choose to just settle it out

47:28

and and pay it out. But if there wasn't,

47:31

which is like a very common case, now

47:33

you can really fight it and say, "Look,

47:35

we we know exactly what happened."

47:37

Drivers love that because I I have to

47:39

say 90% of the time they're doing a

47:41

great job and nobody's seeing it, right?

47:43

And so that has been a huge unlock is

47:45

this positive reinforcement of we're

47:48

analyzing the whole drive. we're seeing

47:49

all these good behaviors, defensive

47:51

driving or exonerations, things like

47:52

that. That I think is what is is sort of

47:55

the counterwe to the hey what is all

47:58

this for? Like how is it being used? If

48:01

you have that in your culture, if you

48:03

are kind of doing the equivalent of

48:04

employee of the month but showcasing

48:07

really great work, I think people get

48:09

really excited about this. Also uh from

48:12

a safety perspective we should remember

48:14

in physical industries the risk uh of

48:17

injury is on the person right so in

48:20

other words like we want everyone to go

48:22

home the same way they came to work

48:24

right that is an important concept that

48:26

I think people don't don't think about

48:28

if you're working construction you're

48:29

working oil field services or something

48:31

like that you take a lot of risk when

48:33

you do your job every day so it's

48:35

actually in the what's in it for me it's

48:36

like we are trying to keep you safe uh

48:39

if you have that and you do it in a

48:41

transparent, thoughtful, you know,

48:43

respectful from a privacy perspective

48:45

way, it it goes a very long way with the

48:47

front line.

48:48

>> Very interesting. And that makes a lot

48:49

of sense. Just to push a little bit, if

48:51

I if I may, um

48:54

um in in some ways the eye also becomes

48:56

a judge of the quality of your work.

49:01

>> I don't know if you agree or disagree.

49:03

Uh I'm curious if there's any uh kind of

49:07

like safeguards about how that happens

49:10

or should happen in the future and

49:12

perhaps it's a fact of life. You know,

49:13

we just had the World Cup and like we we

49:16

now familiar with the VAR review and it

49:19

is what it is. You were offside and

49:21

that's just what it is and technology is

49:22

here to tell everyone that you are

49:24

offside. Curious about like what what

49:26

you've learned. It seems like such an

49:27

important current topic.

49:29

>> Yeah, very much important. I think

49:30

transparency again is like the key word

49:32

here. It's not and by the way our

49:34

cameras are not hidden cameras. They're

49:36

they're quite visible. So it's not like

49:37

a secret sort of recording device. Uh

49:40

and the the whole idea is to bring the

49:43

front line along. So we call this change

49:45

management, right? Like hey, we're

49:46

introducing these things. What do they

49:48

do? What are they for? How can you use

49:49

them? How can they be useful to you? If

49:52

you have that conversation early in a

49:53

transparent way, it tends to be quite

49:55

constructive because um I mentioned Home

49:58

Depot earlier. they saw like a 65%

50:00

reduction in their claims like auto

50:02

claims. That was a huge win for that

50:04

organization both at the sort of

50:06

executive level but more importantly at

50:08

the sort of like regional level. Um

50:10

those kinds of wins are what we want to

50:12

like help create. Now could you use this

50:15

like in a bad guy kind of way? You could

50:18

but that would be like who is sitting

50:19

there watching like each driver? It's

50:21

like super boring by the way to like sit

50:23

and watch drivers, right? Um so when

50:25

when you kind of are transparent about

50:27

what the system's doing and what it's

50:29

not doing and then how the data is used

50:31

that is like how you get the buy in and

50:33

and you earn the trust uh of of that

50:36

entire organization.

50:37

>> All right. So you sit at the very

50:38

forefront of of of all of this in in

50:41

physical AI. Um I'm curious where you

50:45

see the world going as we maybe uh take

50:49

a step back. Are we going towards a

50:51

world of like mixed fleets of of just

50:54

people and just robots and is that is

50:58

that what you're seeing?

50:59

>> Yeah, this is the like if we kind of

51:00

imagine 5 10 years out like where does

51:02

this go? I I do think yes. Um we expect

51:06

there to be a lot more robots sort of

51:08

involved in physical operations. You see

51:10

this actually if you go into a warehouse

51:13

today, right? So if you go into either

51:15

manufacturing or fulfillment center,

51:17

there's actually a lot of automation

51:18

robotics going on. And the the cool part

51:21

about that is it reduces risk of injury

51:23

to a lot of the human workers like

51:24

lifting injuries were very common uh 10

51:27

20 years ago. They're way less common

51:28

these days because quite literally the

51:31

robots doing the heavy lifting. Now

51:33

there's still humans working there

51:34

because there's kind of um all the

51:36

handoffs and you know there there's some

51:38

nuance to the operation but we expect

51:41

something similar to happen out in the

51:43

field right so think about a

51:44

construction site or maybe a company

51:47

building a roadway or you know uh

51:49

modernizing the grid. There's a lot of

51:52

kind of repetitive work that has to

51:53

happen. Imagine you're grading a site

51:55

like you're making it level. Could that

51:57

happen during the third shift between

51:59

midnight and 8 am right? That could be a

52:02

really cool way to do productive work on

52:04

the side of the road where you're just

52:05

going for like five miles making it

52:07

flat, right? Um we we see robots being

52:10

able to do that in the next 5 years.

52:12

Now, all the rest of it though, it's

52:14

still pretty messy and construction has

52:16

like exception after exception. Like

52:18

you're solving problems constantly.

52:20

That's where I think the humans offer a

52:22

lot of experience and judgment of well,

52:24

how should this work? And I'm waiting on

52:26

this building material while I can

52:27

perform this other thing. Meanwhile, the

52:29

robots like making the road flat, right?

52:31

So, that's kind of what we see in the

52:33

next few years. The same thing applies,

52:34

I believe, to logistics and supply

52:36

chain. So, um now like there's a lot of

52:40

kind of last mile complication that

52:41

happens and you have to physically pick

52:43

up deliver package. Some of our

52:45

customers, they stock the shelves in the

52:47

grocery store. Maybe we get there with

52:49

humanoids and you know, never say never

52:51

like this stuff always is evolving. But

52:53

in the meantime, could you automate the

52:55

longhaul segment between Dallas and

52:57

Phoenix, right, of all of those, you

53:00

know, beverage cans coming in or

53:02

something like that? So, we see this as

53:03

an exciting like and uh in terms of what

53:06

the future looks like. And what we've

53:08

seen in operations is very diverse, lots

53:10

of different types of equipment, lots of

53:12

different types of labor. So, it's going

53:14

to be, you know, different makes and

53:16

models and different makes and models of

53:18

different kinds of robots is my guess.

53:19

And from your perspective as a business,

53:21

you would just par it all. Uh I guess

53:23

where would automated trucks and

53:26

humanoids on the construction site fit

53:28

in the overall picture at Simsar?

53:31

>> Well, practically speaking, most of our

53:33

customers would tell you they're supply

53:34

limited in terms of labor, right? So

53:36

these are uh labor intensive asset heavy

53:39

industries. So they welcome this idea of

53:42

like could I automate some of this labor

53:44

so we can basically perform more. So

53:46

that's kind of like our customers are

53:48

are going to be around. they have like a

53:49

lot of work to do. What we want to do is

53:51

provide the sort of uh single pane of

53:54

glass so they can orchestrate the whole

53:55

operation, trigger the workflow of like

53:57

okay that truck is arriving from Dallas.

54:00

Let's get queued up so the warehouse

54:02

systems ready to go and accept it. Um

54:04

let's make sure that we're notifying our

54:06

end customer and so on. And then I

54:08

showed the tracking label earlier. You

54:10

could put that on the pallet of goods.

54:11

So you can track it end to end as it's

54:13

changes hands through the supply chain

54:16

as it makes its way to a job site um as

54:18

it's installed. This is all very opaque

54:21

today. Like if you think about your, you

54:23

know, shipments that you receive as a

54:24

consumer, you might get like five five

54:27

updates, right? Like left this left the

54:29

facility, you know, out out on the road,

54:31

out for delivery, etc. We see like

54:34

hundreds and hundreds of pings. That's

54:36

going to be really important when things

54:37

are moving on their own. you know, where

54:39

is that um aerospace assembly, right?

54:42

Like we have customers who want to know

54:43

where this really expensive asset is

54:45

that they need to perform their job

54:47

right now. That's sort of like

54:49

unttracked.

54:50

>> Do you think uh automated uh you know

54:52

self-driving trucking is just around the

54:54

corner? It seems to be around the corner

54:56

for cars. I mean obviously it's already

54:58

happening with Whimos uh and and Teslas

55:01

now and automated pilot. In three years

55:03

are we at 10% uh self-driving trucks?

55:07

Are we at 75%? What's your gut?

55:11

>> I think on the robo taxi side it's going

55:13

to happen a bit faster because the

55:15

operations are much more regional. Um

55:18

they're much more um similar, right?

55:20

Like the way that you and I ride in a

55:22

taxi across town is going to be quite

55:24

similar. And so that's I think where

55:26

you're going to see the biggest sort of

55:27

like visible impact of autonomous

55:30

vehicles. Um, on the trucking side, it's

55:32

also important to realize like there's

55:34

long haul trucking and kind of like

55:36

moving stuff from point A to point B.

55:37

That tends to be a minority fraction of

55:39

what the commercial vehicles on the road

55:41

are doing. Most of the commercial

55:43

vehicles are um in like industries like

55:45

field service, right? So, they're HVAC

55:47

technicians or plumbers, electricians,

55:49

so people performing some work. Um, and

55:52

they're also they're either doing

55:54

something like that or they're in

55:55

industries like construction where

55:56

they're building the road. that tends to

55:58

be where current day sort of like

56:01

autonomy doesn't work so well. It's like

56:03

the really messy long tail. So for that

56:05

reason, we think the adoption might be a

56:07

bit slower, but it's not like a no. It's

56:10

just it might take 10 20 years. And

56:12

these are industries where again the

56:14

equipment's highly specialized. Like if

56:16

you look at cement mixers or you know

56:18

garbage trucks, like these are

56:19

customuilt. So for um for the autonomy

56:23

systems to make their way out to that

56:25

edge is just going to be a longer

56:27

diffusion curve than you know for a

56:29

sedan which is or or a van or something

56:31

like that which is very much the same.

56:33

>> Great. Maybe to to close um I'm very

56:36

very curious like you're at the heart of

56:38

this real economy as we said at the at

56:41

the beginning of this conversation

56:43

transportation and utilities and

56:45

manufacturing and all those you know

56:47

fundamentally important things. What

56:49

what's your sense of the reality of

56:52

American industrial

56:55

power today? Are you seeing same level

56:59

of velocity? Are you seeing an

57:00

acceleration?

57:01

Uh is the AI boom and like the data

57:04

centers like having a real impact on

57:06

your customers? What what's your um

57:09

sense of the level of just um velocity?

57:13

>> Yeah, very much. So I I think our

57:15

customers have it's very clear they're

57:17

busier than they've ever been before. So

57:19

from like an American economy

57:21

perspective, like we're seeing a lot of

57:23

intensity. Um I was just in the field

57:25

last week with a large energy utility.

57:27

Um and they've been involved in grid

57:29

modernization and uh they shared with me

57:31

a really interesting stat. They said,

57:33

you know, over the last 125 years, we

57:35

built a certain amount of grid capacity

57:36

in in megawatts or or gigawatts really.

57:39

Um in the next 5 years, we're going to

57:42

triple that. Like they as a company are

57:44

going to 3x the amount of power they

57:47

deliver. And that's like in five years

57:49

versus 125 years. So that requires a

57:51

tremendous amount of infrastructure

57:53

build even with new technologies. It's

57:54

like they can't work fast enough. U we

57:57

are seeing that across so many different

57:59

kinds of industries. And in that case

58:00

like they also shared you know 90% of

58:02

that demand is data center related. So

58:04

as the data center demand continues to

58:06

skyrocket the energy needs or all these

58:08

like different bottlenecks that have

58:09

been appearing. So many of our physical

58:11

operations companies uh customer

58:13

companies are involved in in that

58:16

directly. I know a lot of people that

58:18

your customers employ are trades people.

58:20

What what's your take on evolution of

58:22

trade? Like the the the idea that you

58:24

know we've seen we've all seen in the

58:26

last like couple of years is that uh

58:27

actually being a plumber uh becoming a

58:30

plumber might be a great idea if your

58:32

lawyer job is going to get automated.

58:34

Some of it is some level joke but I'm

58:36

I'm curious about uh what what you what

58:39

what you take is

58:40

>> Yeah. I I I will warn the lawyers

58:42

thinking about becoming plumbers. It's

58:43

it's a pretty messy job, right? So,

58:45

>> it's much harder.

58:46

>> It's it's pretty hard stuff. Um, so yes,

58:49

we've been continuing to see that

58:51

there's a basically a labor shortage,

58:52

labor bottleneck in a number of

58:54

different trades, but also things like

58:56

long haul trucking, commercial driver's

58:58

license holders, things like that. So,

59:00

uh, in general, I think there's a lot of

59:02

growing demand for these uh,

59:04

professions. And this data center boom

59:06

is a great example. There are just like

59:07

not enough electricians, uh, out there

59:09

right now. So you see companies like

59:11

Meta doing initiatives to like reskill

59:14

people, train them on how to become, you

59:16

know, a good electrician and then how

59:18

can you take the people who are trained

59:20

and make their jobs as efficient as

59:21

possible. So you don't want them like

59:23

waiting on materials at a job site like

59:25

you want to put them to work to perform

59:28

uh you know wherever their skills are

59:29

needed kind of thing. So very much kind

59:32

of a bottleneck, but the trades are in

59:33

incredible demand. And I also think that

59:36

their jobs are getting um more

59:38

modernized as well because if you think

59:40

about it as an electrician, a lot of it

59:42

is getting to the job site and having

59:44

the materials and knowing what you're

59:46

going to do. If an AI can kind of help

59:48

you with that, it takes a lot of the

59:50

mental load off and you can focus on on

59:52

the really unique trade kind of value

59:53

you have.

59:54

>> Well, Sanj, it's been a fantastic

59:55

conversation. Thank you so much. very

59:58

excited about uh what you guys are

1:00:01

continuing to build and like its sheer

1:00:03

importance in the overall economy and

1:00:05

it's been wonderful to learn more about

1:00:06

it. So, thank you.

1:00:07

>> Thank you. It's been fun.

1:00:10

>> Hi, it's Matt Turk again. Thanks for

1:00:12

listening to this episode of the Mad

1:00:13

Podcast. If you enjoyed it, we'd be very

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