Disruption Drive

A Robot Coworker on a Farm Near You (Kevin Leiter, COO Burro AI)

Physical AI has often been explained as a story of labor replacement. My next guest isn't coming for the farmer’s job—he is building their newest coworker. The story of Physical AI has often been sold as one of labor replacement. But in the vineyards and raspberry fields, Burro is forging new paths - Autonomous systems that are rugged enough for the grit, affordable enough for the orchard, and smart enough to work side-by-side with a human crew. We are standing on the edge of a world where the best grapes you may eat depend on a robot having picked them This episode on Disruption Drive, I am joined by Kevin Leiter, COO of Burro.AI [http://Burro.AI] to discuss the dirty, dusty, and brilliant reality of off-road farm autonomy.

Parking the Autonomous Car (with Jim Gibbs, CEO Meter Feeder)

While Goldman Sachs projects autonomous vehicles and robotaxis to grow at 90% CAGR, fleet experts generally agree the state of the art robot will be soon defeated by a metal kiosk on the curbside. The taxi cannot feed a coin slot and probably not download many consumer software that vary city to cuty- creating a very real likelihood of empty cars just circling around causing even more congestion while Municipalities lose money. My guest today is solving that problem - in the first week of April 2026, Meter Feeder delivered the first ever machine to machine, completely automated parking payment in the United States. I welcome Jim Gibbs, who is building the parking payments for the Future of Mobility

Engineering the Open Road with Mapless AI (Jeff Johnson, CTO Mapless AI)

While we chase the technological vision of Full Self Driving cars, millions of legacy driven vehicles already ply on our roads. Mapless AI isn’t waiting for a driverless future; they’re retrofitting today’s cars to be operated from afar, prioritizing resilient engineering and safe unit economics over integrated HD maps. My guest is working on turning existing fleets into remote-ready assets. He believes while giants build a new autonomous vehicle, a more pertinent task is the bridge to Autonomy for the existing vehicle. He is a Technology leader who has the stellar pedigree of the most important Engineering leaps in Autonomous Technologies: with leadership stints at Bosch, Apple and Uber ATG. And he is now a pioneer in Open Road remote access. Welcome Jeff Johnson, CTO of Mapless AI,.

Silicon Meets Soil: Autonomy on the Farm (Tim Bucher, AgTonomy)

For ten thousand years, the 'cutting edge' of civilization was tiny seeds with the promise of food sunk into the Earth. Farming is our oldest technology; it is the engine that created our calendars, our cultures, and our very survival. Today, we are standing at the very beginning of a digital revolution that promises to change the landscape of the earth as profoundly as the first plow. My next guest is perhaps the most strategic operator in automation because he bridges these two seemingly impossible worlds. He is also a veteran of the trenches of Silicon Valley. He has worked directly for the most impactful architects of our modern era: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell. But Tim is also a sixth generation farmer who carries the weight of Agricultural heritage in his blood. Tim Bucher is the CEO of Agtonomy, and he’s building the robots that will drive the farms of tomorrow.

Bot Auto and the Profit First Playbook for Autonomous Trucking (Paul Lam, Bot Auto)

In the autonomous vehicle industry, credibility has long anchored in safety. But while safety is non-negotiable, it’s also an intangible baseline to drive adoption. On the flip side, we see headlines dominated by miles driven and total revenue, metrics that often leave stakeholders wondering if the needle is being moved at all. Bot Auto has decided to bypass the vanity metrics to obsess over a single, measurable, tangible bottomline: Cost Per Mile. By building a 'Transportation as a Service' model, they aren't just aiming to be safer; they’re aiming to prove that the way to win the autonomy race is to make it both safer and cheaper than the status quo. Today, we're explore if this 'profit-first' philosophy is the key to unlocking true adoption. My guest Paul Lam, is CFO and Chief Strategy Officer at Bot Auto