Partner @Creandum, investing pre-seed to Series A. Love all things AI for the real world.
Berlin, Germany
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- Followers 1,687
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Worth a listen to hear the origin story of @Machenta_ and how @Ed__Johns has been truly an OG in the space
Machenta CEO @Ed__Johns reveals how betting against the robotics industry's approach led his team to build robots that learn new tasks instantly from just one demonstration:
"I decided what I wanted to build is a robot brain that can learn tasks like a human. And the rest of the world went off in a different direction."
"They started collecting lots and lots of data in the real world, with the assumption that you would need to provide hundreds of demonstrations."
"I always thought there’s something not quite right about that, where a robot would need to spend hours or days to learn a task. That’s what I bet on at Imperial College."
"The internals of it are nothing like the human brain. But the way you interact with it is like interacting with a human."
"If I wanted to teach you a task, I could give you a demonstration, and you’d be able to do that task. You wouldn’t need hundreds of demonstrations, and you wouldn’t need days or weeks of training."
"You provide one demonstration of the task, and then instantly the robot will be able to perform that task. Which is very different to what’s been going on elsewhere in robotics, where the assumption has been that you need lots and lots of data to teach a robot even a basic task."
@Machenta_
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Machenta just came out of stealth with a $40M seed, making them the inaugural company on our new funding leaderboard -- the first of many to come:
Today we’re out of stealth, and we’ve raised a $40m seed round co-led by @creandum and @usv, to bring Instant Robot Learning to life.
For the past few months, we‘ve been busy building a new company.
Machenta.
This follows results from a new kind of robot foundation model we’ve built, which I’m so excited to share with you today!
Usually, it takes hours/days of data collection and training to teach a robot.
We’ve built a model that learns tasks instantly: one demonstration, no further training.
A model trained entirely in simulation, without a single pixel of real-world data.
A model where teaching robots is so quick and easy, it feels like physical vibe coding.
A model for robots that learn like humans do, from someone like you.
Welcome to the era of Instant Robot Learning.
Thank you @Kathi_Wilhelm, @rebeccakaden, @hkanji, @jonno_evans and all of our angels for your support!
@Machenta_
Learn more: machenta.com/blog/instant-ro…
See below for what you can do with Instant Robot Learning!
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For robotics to mature as a deployable technology, it may be critical for models to go beyond natural language.
I’ve been a big fan of demos as a test-time modality, and it’s been extremely exciting to see the progress the @Machenta_ has made the past months!
Today we’re out of stealth, and we’ve raised a $40m seed round co-led by @creandum and @usv, to bring Instant Robot Learning to life.
For the past few months, we‘ve been busy building a new company.
Machenta.
This follows results from a new kind of robot foundation model we’ve built, which I’m so excited to share with you today!
Usually, it takes hours/days of data collection and training to teach a robot.
We’ve built a model that learns tasks instantly: one demonstration, no further training.
A model trained entirely in simulation, without a single pixel of real-world data.
A model where teaching robots is so quick and easy, it feels like physical vibe coding.
A model for robots that learn like humans do, from someone like you.
Welcome to the era of Instant Robot Learning.
Thank you @Kathi_Wilhelm, @rebeccakaden, @hkanji, @jonno_evans and all of our angels for your support!
@Machenta_
Learn more: machenta.com/blog/instant-ro…
See below for what you can do with Instant Robot Learning!
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Physical vibe coding is here.
@Machenta_ brings instant learning to robots: show a robot a task once and it gets to work. You prompt it with a demonstration the way you prompt ChatGPT with text.
While most of robotics races to collect more real-world data, @Ed__Johns and @vitalisvos19 spent the past years at @imperialcollege on the opposite bet: a model trained entirely in simulation that learns how to learn.
That means it’s bounded by compute, not data, and it will only get better as it scales.
We believe the hardest problems are often solved by people who bring a different lens. Ed is a true polymath: after his PhD, he spent a year as a singer-songwriter, playing gigs with a then still unknown Ed Sheeran. In a band, when someone shows you a chord, you rarely need to see it twice. Perhaps that’s why Ed asked a different question from most of his field: not how to make robots learn more, but how humans learn so fast.
At @creandum, we're proud to co-lead Machenta’s $40M seed with @usv, backing Ed, Vitalis and the team.
Today we’re out of stealth, and we’ve raised a $40m seed round co-led by @creandum and @usv, to bring Instant Robot Learning to life.
For the past few months, we‘ve been busy building a new company.
Machenta.
This follows results from a new kind of robot foundation model we’ve built, which I’m so excited to share with you today!
Usually, it takes hours/days of data collection and training to teach a robot.
We’ve built a model that learns tasks instantly: one demonstration, no further training.
A model trained entirely in simulation, without a single pixel of real-world data.
A model where teaching robots is so quick and easy, it feels like physical vibe coding.
A model for robots that learn like humans do, from someone like you.
Welcome to the era of Instant Robot Learning.
Thank you @Kathi_Wilhelm, @rebeccakaden, @hkanji, @jonno_evans and all of our angels for your support!
@Machenta_
Learn more: machenta.com/blog/instant-ro…
See below for what you can do with Instant Robot Learning!
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Katharina Wilhelm retweeted
nothing short of incredible continued growth displayed by @bernhardsson and team @modal.
so very impressive.
massive congrats on this double milestone
very proud for @creandum to be a part of this journey since first round (led by @AmplifyPartners & @sarahcat21 - stellar job)
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Great investing = human taste + a machine that never sleeps.
We're hiring for both sides at @Creandum:
-> Technical VP, investing in the lower layers of the AI stack
-> Head of Data & Intelligence, building the infra, data layer and tooling for our day-to-day
More in the 🧵
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We're looking for an AI-pilled person to join our investment team. If post-training open-source models to outperform frontier models or the latest innovations on agent harnesses is what gets you going - we'd love to talk. More info and how to apply at sthlm-vp.creandum.com/
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We're also looking for our first head of data & intelligence. Our edge has always been our people and relationships. The next edge is making everything those people learn compound. You'll get a blank canvas and real ownership to build that foundation:
intelligence.creandum.com/
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Loved the optimism about Europe and AI on our panel at @bitsandpretzels with Zhenya, @ZeynepYWillson and @inxoy_. 5 takeaways 🧵
1) AI diffusion is still early. The market is frothy, especially in early-stage valuations, but there's still a tremendous amount of opportunity
(1/5)
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4) When backing founders, we look for urgency, speed and a high slope - which can show up just as much in young university drop-outs as in the "gentleman founders with taste and discernment" (to quote @garrytan) (4/5)
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Katharina Wilhelm retweeted
"Dealroom predicts that AI funding in the EU is expected to accelerate by 113 percent for 2023 and 2024 - compared to a 47 percent increase in the US."
@Kathi_Wilhelm, Partner at @indexventures on why Europe’s startup ecosystem is healthier than ever
manager-magazin.de/unternehm…
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Katharina Wilhelm retweeted
🚀 Excited to launch Scaling Through Chaos from @IndexVentures — out today!
👩💻 Scale teams faster and smarter with an analysis of 200,000 career profiles
🌪️ Learn lessons from 200 startups including @Airbnb, @datadoghq, @Figma, @Stripe and @Wiz_io
💬 More than 60 interviews with founders and functional leaders
📕 Read online now: scalingthroughchaos.com #scalingthroughchaos
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Katharina Wilhelm retweeted
Excited to share that @IndexVentures is backing @DataSnipper with $100m at $1B valuation. I am joining the board to work with the company’s CEO @vidya_peters and the excellent team.
Hundreds of thousands of auditors are using it to automate much of the tedious work they do every day, and there’s a huge opportunity and demand across other sectors where data verification is a core part of the workflow. Customers LOVE the product, and I can’t wait to see their continued impact across the industry.
👏 Index is partnering with @DataSnipper and leading its $100M Series B at $1B valuation to empower auditors with AI.
@jeremyakahn writes in @FortuneMagazine
fortune.com/2024/02/01/data-…
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Katharina Wilhelm retweeted
Index Partners @Kathi_Wilhelm and Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas share their perspective on Tacto and the industry.
indexventures.com/perspectiv…
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Excited to join tacto.ai in its mission to tackle disruptions and bureaucracy in industrial supply chains!
Growing bureaucracy and regulation at every level, along with external macro shocks from inflation make it paramount to future-proof supply chains.
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With its innovative implementation of AI, Tacto streamlines all procurement workflows, ensuring compliant and sustainable supply chains, along with enabling efficient material sourcing.
Thrilled to be working with @LucianaLix, @JulienBek, @CherryVentures and @VisionariesVC!
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More of our thoughts here: indexventures.com/perspectiv…
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