🔁Mario Nawfal:
🚨 UNCANNY VALLEY: 52 MILLION MEALS AND COUNTING – HOW CHEF ROBOTICS IS THE FUTURE OF AUTOMATION
The robotics revolution isn’t coming… it’s already here.
In this episode of Uncanny Valley, @OperationDanish sits down with @ChefRobotics founder @RajatBhageria to unpack how task-specific robots are moving off the lab bench and into real factories - starting with food.
From automating food assembly to deploying robots at scale across North America, Chef is proving that reliable, high-utilization robotics is no longer a science project.
This is the blueprint for real-world automation – built for production, not demos.
Forget the hype. This is what real AI in the real world looks like.
00:15 – Why food assembly was the right robotic problem to solve
02:48 – 52M meals, robots across US and Canada, real ROI
05:23 – “Optimus doesn’t need to cook your food, and Chef doesn’t need to drive your Tesla.”
06:55 – Why humanoids can’t compete on cost or utilization
13:34 – YouTube demos ≠ training data
17:11 – The problem with teleop and brittle RL pipelines
24:40 – Selling robots before building them: the Chef playbook
31:37 – What AI-native startups can learn from RaaS
34:22 – “Is robotics hot again?” The funding cycles & investor fatigue
40:47 – Why vertical wins must come before infrastructure
42:35 – The #1 predictor of robotics startup success
45:42 – Passion vs delusion: what really drives hard-tech founders
50:53 – High-throughput robotics and the case for food
56:18 – How Chef is using diffusion policy and imitation learning
59:56 – Why robotics will scale now, even if the tech hasn’t changed
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/... https://x.com/MarioNawfal/...
🚨 UNCANNY VALLEY: 52 MILLION MEALS AND COUNTING – HOW CHEF ROBOTICS IS THE FUTURE OF AUTOMATION
The robotics revolution isn’t coming… it’s already here.
In this episode of Uncanny Valley, @OperationDanish sits down with @ChefRobotics founder @RajatBhageria to unpack how task-specific robots are moving off the lab bench and into real factories - starting with food.
From automating food assembly to deploying robots at scale across North America, Chef is proving that reliable, high-utilization robotics is no longer a science project.
This is the blueprint for real-world automation – built for production, not demos.
Forget the hype. This is what real AI in the real world looks like.
00:15 – Why food assembly was the right robotic problem to solve
02:48 – 52M meals, robots across US and Canada, real ROI
05:23 – “Optimus doesn’t need to cook your food, and Chef doesn’t need to drive your Tesla.”
06:55 – Why humanoids can’t compete on cost or utilization
13:34 – YouTube demos ≠ training data
17:11 – The problem with teleop and brittle RL pipelines
24:40 – Selling robots before building them: the Chef playbook
31:37 – What AI-native startups can learn from RaaS
34:22 – “Is robotics hot again?” The funding cycles & investor fatigue
40:47 – Why vertical wins must come before infrastructure
42:35 – The #1 predictor of robotics startup success
45:42 – Passion vs delusion: what really drives hard-tech founders
50:53 – High-throughput robotics and the case for food
56:18 – How Chef is using diffusion policy and imitation learning
59:56 – Why robotics will scale now, even if the tech hasn’t changed
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/... https://x.com/MarioNawfal/...
7 days ago
