The a16z Show The Robots Already Working in American Factories | Tutor Intelligence
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Nov 2, 2026 
Josh Gruenstein, co-founder and CEO of Tutor Intelligence, builds AI-powered robots for factories and warehouses. He discusses deploying robots in real workplaces, human tutors, robot training data, and the challenge of uniting AI, hardware, manufacturing, and operations. The conversation explores flexible robotic labor, a 100-robot data factory, industrial robot design, and the future of American manufacturing.
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Spatial Reasoning Accelerates Robot Learning
- New spatial reasoning capabilities let frontier models transfer knowledge from 3D data into robot action.
- Tutor’s durable advantage is the deployment flywheel, not any single model architecture.
Tutor Had To Build Its Own Robot Supply
- U.S. robot deployment remains tiny, and existing industrial machines target repetitive tasks rather than frontier-model collaboration.
- Tutor therefore manufactures its own complete mobile robot while sourcing components such as cameras and actuators.
Two Robot Bodies Cover Most Factory Work
- Tutor co-designs robot bodies around factory economics instead of forcing one morphology everywhere.
- Cassie handles heavy pallet work, while wheeled Sunny targets safer, faster indoor manipulation and runs in a 100-robot data factory.