Building Deep Tech with Ilir Aliu

• Ep 91 | The Real Truth Of Autonomy Lives In The Stats (w/ Harals Schäfer)

  In this episode, I talk with Harald Schäfer, CTO at comma.ai, where he is leading one of the most interesting autonomy efforts in the world:They work on end to end driving and generative world models is changing how small teams can compete with billion dollar labs.We talk about his path from electrical engineering in Belgium and Santa Barbara to joining comma as one of the earliest engineers. Harald explains how he helped turn a hacker project into a focused engineering team that ships reliable autonomy to thousands of real users.He walks me through comma’s move to a single neural network that controls the car from video input, why deleting code is often more powerful than adding more, and how his team uses world models to train on billions of synthetic miles that never existed on real roads. Harald also shares what it is like to build inside a company with no CEO, why simplicity beats complexity in autonomy systems, and how the new comma 4 and Body 2 signal a move beyond cars into general robotics.If you work in robotics, autonomy, or AI systems, this conversation is packed with lessons about engineering clarity, avoiding brittle stacks, and shipping real products with small teams.

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• Ep 89 | Business Masterclass: Selling First Before Building (w/ Albane Dersy)

  Albane Dersy turned down Goldman Sachs to build Inbolt, a robotics company now deployed in factories across the world. Her story is a masterclass in execution:In this episode, we talk about how Albane grew up in Paris, pushed her way through the French prep school system, and found her path into entrepreneurship after a semester at Wharton opened her eyes to what was possible. She explains how she met her two co-founders during the X EC program, and how the first version of Inbolt had nothing to do with robots. They started with a real-time guidance tool for workers and later pivoted to industrial robots after spending months on factory floors and seeing where customers really needed help.Albane walks through what it takes to sell and deploy automation inside global companies. She talks about why founders need to be on site all the time, and why selling early matters more than waiting for perfect reliability. She explains why deployment is everything in manufacturing and how Inbolt built a system that retrofit existing robots, reduced downtime, and proved value in a few weeks instead of years.We also talk about ambition, hard work, and the pressure she faced breaking into industries that are not always welcoming to young founders. Albane shares her early years in boxing gyms, her drive to be taken seriously, and the mindset that helped her operate and grow a company that now works with some of the biggest manufacturers in the world.If you want a clear look at how real robotics gets deployed at scale, and what it takes to build a company inside the most demanding industry in the world, this is an episode you should hear.

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• Ep 90 | Why are you not throwing yourself into this? (w/ Hendrik Susemihl)

  Dr. Hendrik Susemihl, CEO and Co founder of GoodBytz, shows you how fully automated kitchens can solve the labor crisis in food service and still serve better, fresher food at scale.We talk about his path from taking apart PCs as a teenager, to building large automation systems at Fraunhofer, to becoming CTO at NEURA Robotics. Hendrik explains why he walked away from a safe leadership role after his father’s heart attacks, how going plant based changed how he sees food, and why he became obsessed with the question: if I can cook healthy meals quickly at home, why is it so hard to get that quality in hospitals, canteens, and on the road.Hendrik breaks down how GoodBytz works in practice: a compact robotic kitchen that cooks up to 150 meals per hour, runs 24/7, and delivers consistent quality in places like university hospitals and motorway sites. We get into what they learned from running their own Lieferando brand, why he mostly ignores CVs and hires for people who build things for fun, and how a small Hamburg startup ended up signing a landmark contract with the US Army to feed soldiers in South Korea.If you care about robotics with real deployment, food at scale, or building a deep tech company that actually ships, this episode will be very useful for you.

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• Ep 88 | Always a Bit of a Generalist, Never Only One Thing (w/ Jon Miller Schwartz)

  In this episode, I talk with Jon Miller Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of Ultra, about how to actually get robots deployed in warehouses:We walk through Jon’s journey from tearing apart electronics on a tiny New York City workbench to Harvey Mudd, early YC startups in 3D printing, and building one of the first highly automated factories at Voodoo Manufacturing. Jon explains why those painful years with “last generation” robots convinced him to start Ultra and focus on one thing first e commerce order packing as a beachhead for real industrial deployment.He breaks down how Ultra’s robots drop into existing pack stations, learn from examples instead of brittle scripts, and why he believes in multi purpose robots before truly general purpose systems. We talk about force sensitive dexterity, what most people get wrong about warehouse automation, and how a small team in Brooklyn already has robots running live for customers. If you care about turning AI and robotics into shipped systems instead of slideware, this one is for you.

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• Ep 87 | Speed Is Objectively the Most Important Thing in Life (w/ Axel Peytavin)

  Axel Peytavin, co-founder & CEO of Innate, shows you how to teach real robots with language and quick demos without being a roboticist.We talk about Axel’s path from France to Stanford and why he is betting on personal robotics you can program with prompts, code, and demonstrations. He explains Mars, Innate’s $2K teachable robot with a Jetson Orin Nano, RGB-D vision, wrist camera, 2D LiDAR, and a 6-DOF arm.We break down BASIC, their open embodied agent that plans, remembers spaces, and chains skills. You will hear how a new skill can be trained in under 30 minutes, runs locally, and can be shared across a fleet.Axel walks through real use cases like chess play with camera understanding, pick and place, tidying, and security patrols. We cover the SDK, the open platform approach on ROS2, and why Innate focuses on accessibility, teachability, and community. If you want an insight into his story, a clear playbook for getting hands-on with embodied AI, and moving from lab demos to working robots, this episode is for you.

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