Sebastian Thrun reveals new robotics startup Dulo

Sebastian Thrun, the engineer who led Google’s self-driving car project that became Waymo, has revealed a new robotics startup named Dulo. Thrun announced the venture during a keynote at the Actuate robotics conference in San Francisco.

Dulo is currently operating in stealth mode. While specific details regarding funding, products, or launch dates have not been disclosed, a Stanford-hosted webpage indicates the company is developing ‘foundation models for hardware design’ to achieve ‘manufacturing at lightspeed.’ Unlike many competitors focused on humanoid robots, Dulo appears to target the design and manufacturing stages of physical machine production.

The startup’s team includes leaders from Waymo, Google Brain, and Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). Thrun has a long history in the field, having co-founded Google Brain and Google X, and previously leading the now-defunct flying-car startup Kittyhawk.