O-ID returns to San Francisco after its pre-seed
O-ID's cofounders, Stian Jakobsen (CEO) and Simon Gormuzov (CTO), were in San Francisco and the Bay Area from 30 September to 11 October. It was their second trip this year. In May, the goal was to explain what O-ID wanted to build. This time they went back to many of the same investors and teams with progress to show: a prototype assembled and tested in Tokyo, ongoing discussions with potential customers in Japan, a $1.2M pre-seed round announced in September, and a growing engineering team.
Investors
On 2 October, O-ID took part in Techstars Investor Day. This invite-only event brings together up to 40 of Techstars' highest-performing portfolio companies and its investor network. The team met leading Silicon Valley investors and reconnected with several they first spoke to in May. They came back with a number of active discussions. For O-ID, the pre-seed round is a foundation for the next stage, not an end point.
Physical AI
The founders also spent time with technical founders and with robotics and physical AI teams across the Valley. They compared what each team is building, where the field is heading, and where their technologies could fit together. O-ID is exploring technology partnerships that connect Japan's robotics and manufacturing strengths with the physical AI ecosystem in the US.
Through Google for Startups, the team was invited to Google. There they met people from Google DeepMind and spoke with industry experts.
People
Much of the trip's value came from time with founders and engineers working on similar problems. Those relationships bring an outside perspective, and they matter as O-ID grows internationally.
Back in Tokyo
O-ID has moved into a new office in Tokyo, with room for the team, a workshop and the robot, and the team is growing. Work is under way on the next prototype, with real-world deployments as the goal. Progress in Japan makes the conversations abroad more useful, and those conversations help sharpen what the team builds next.
Contact
Press and partnerships: contact@o-id.net
Modular humanoids.
Tokyo, Japan.