The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Boris Sofman, founder of Anki, a maker of AI-powered toys, to talk about why he chose toys (2:45), convincing investors to back him (5:25), starting out making a real life Mario Kart (7:20), using a prototype to pitch (9:50), creating a Pixar-style robot (13:05), putting software at the heart of its toy (17:00), engineering emotion (18:05), the importance of eye contact (21:15), if toys can get ‘too good’ (23:50), the difference from old-school companies (25:25), the future of ‘the family robot’ (27:15), why Anki won’t be a toy company for long (31:40), growing up in Russia and Texas (34:30), studying robots at Carnegie Mellon (35:30), and the explosion of the robotics industry (37:30).

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