Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, argues that robotics is not about to have a ChatGPT moment. Instead, she says the field is in its “Lego era”: the basic building blocks, including actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards, are still being rebuilt. That view directly challenges the position taken by General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte, who told TechCrunch’s Equity podcast earlier this year that a single general foundation model would make much of today’s specialized robotics work redundant and effectively be that moment.

Vishwanath is now founder and managing partner of Techable VC, an early-stage firm investing in physical AI across robotics, materials science, and life sciences. On this episode of Equity, host Dominic-Madori Davis spoke with Vishwanath about where she is writing first checks and what she has learned as one of the first women executives to spin out of NVIDIA and launch her own venture firm. The conversation frames robotics as a space still in need of infrastructure and standardization, rather than one waiting only for a breakthrough model.