🎙️ I talked with Benjamin Bolte, founder of K-Scale Labs, who left Meta to build something he actually believes in: an open-source humanoid robot!
After working on Autopilot at Tesla, he saw the inside of Optimus and decided the big players were getting it wrong.
Benjamin walks me through how he built the first robot with Alibaba parts and 3D-printed parts in his apartment, why raising too much money too early is a trap, and how soldering wires all night helped him remember why he’s doing this in the first place.
He’s not chasing prestige or funding rounds. He’s trying to ship a $9K robot that can do your laundry. We talk about his time at Tesla and Meta, how he thinks about mortality, the power of conviction, why open-source matters, and what it really takes to build hardware that people want to own.
Building Deep Tech with Ilir Aliu