Innovator Coffee EP-36 Beyond the model - The real challenge of robotics

Innovator Coffee EP-36 Beyond the model - The real challenge of robotics

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. This is Wickey. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends. Guest Bio Joe Hsy is the Founder and CTO of Chestnut Robotics, a startup building dexterous manipulation platforms designed to address labor shortages in advanced manufacturing. Prior to founding Chestnut Robotics, Joe led end-to-end AI initiatives at XPeng and was an early member of the Foundation Model team at Waymo. Summary In this episode, Joe shares insights on dexterous manipulation, robotics data bottlenecks, foundation models for robots, startup building, and the future of physical intelligence. Joe also reflects on the transition from AI engineer to startup founder, the challenges of building a company from scratch, and why founders must become generalists capable of solving whatever problem is broken that day. Innovator Coffee bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. We interview founders, investors, researchers, and operators shaping the future of technology. Follow us for conversations on AI, robotics, cybersecurity, venture capital, and emerging technologies. Episode Summary Timeline 00:00 – 07:15 What Is Dexterous Manipulation? 07:15 – 11:55 Building Hardware and Software Together 11:56 – 16:15 Waymo vs. Tesla: Two Innovation Cultures 16:16 – 22:05 From Startup to Product in Nine Months 22:06 – 27:00 Open Source, Data, and the Business Model 27:01 – 32:00 Solving the Robotics Data Problem 32:01 – 40:20 The Road to Commercial Humanoid Robots 40:21 – 44:50 From Technologist to Founder 44:51 – 46:30 The Future of RoboticsKey QuoteAbout Innovator Coffee Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/ Host：Wickey Wang *IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty *Growth fund VC advisor, VC fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus *GAI Security book co-author & SafenAI co-founder Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913⁠⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913/]

Innovator Coffee EP - 35 HumanX Live: Insights with Plaud

Episode Summary This episode of Innovator Cafe was recorded live on the final day of the HumanX conference. The conversation centers on Plaud, an AI-powered wearable note-taking device, and explores the broader future of AI-native hardware, human-agent interaction, and the philosophy of building professional-grade products. The discussion moves from Plaud's core product positioning, a prosumer tool for professionals who need perfect recall in high-stakes conversations, through competitive strategy, privacy architecture, hardware form factor innovation, and ultimately lands on a thought-provoking question about whether the current UI paradigm for human-AI interaction is fundamentally broken. Speaker 2 : Founding Product Manager, PlaudPreviously led an AI wearables group at Google, where he worked on Pixel Watch and filed a patent as lead inventor on the first on-watch language model. He joined Plaud after personally using the product and connecting with the team around a shared vision for professional-grade AI wearables. Speaker 3: Jagi, Serial Entrepreneur, Product Leader & InvestorA seasoned product executive and investor with experience across consumer and enterprise AI products. She has a particular interest in how AI tools serve real human needs in high-stakes moments Guest Host: Bill Sun, AI Researcher & FounderHas spent a decade in AI research focused on how models become products. 1. 00:02-02:50Plod's product positioning 2.02:50- 05:20Target users and use cases 3.05:20-07:00Two types of voice AI products 4.07:00- 09:18Edge use cases and hardware reliability 5. 09:1815:19Privacy architecture and competitive moat 6. 15:19-22:06 Proactive AI and intentional vs. ambient recording 7. 22:0-32:15 Hardware form factors, past, present, and future 8. 32:15-44:04 Contrarian predictions and the broken UI problem

Innovator Coffee EP-34 AI Investing, Agent Era, and the Attention Economy: with Weibo Co-Founder Indigo

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. This is Wickey. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends. Episode Indigo has lived through every major platform shift of the past twenty years. He thinks this one is different, and he has the portfolio to back it up. In this episode, he joins hosts Wickey and Bill to cover: why Weibo (X in China) could never have become TikTok (it was a founder DNA problem, not a product problem), why the long-term AI winner won't have the best model but the best attention engine, and why most AI startups won't survive the agent era. He also shares his investing framework, his take on why everything, including VC funds and software products, is now media, and the one question none of them can answer: when AI agents start collaborating at scale, what happens to how we work, build, and relate to each other? Guest Indigo is the co-founder of Weibo, China's defining social media platform (Like X in US). He led product and technology from Weibo's founding inside Sina in 2009 through its 2014 IPO, then pioneered China's live streaming ecommerce model, building the operation behind top creators including Li Jiaqi. In 2023, he launched a private AI fund that has backed Anthropic, Cohere, xAI, Together AI, Lambda, and SpaceX. He also hosts Indigo Talk. Timeline 1. Introductions & Portfolio 00:02 — 03:30 2. Building Weibo: Crisis, Competition, and Survival 03:30 — 14:27 3. Founder Mindset: On Pressure, Persistence, and Knowing When to Quit 14:27 — 18:03 4. Founder DNA: Why ByteDance Could Catch Every Wave and Weibo Couldn't 18:03 — 27:09 5. Investment Logic: Models and Infrastructure Are the Only High-Certainty Bets 27:09 — 39:00 6. Everything Is Media: Attention Before Product, Distribution Before Everything 39:00 — 52:12 7. The Agent Era: Organizations, Collaboration, and What Comes Next 52:12 — 01:16:28 8. Agent Identity, Security, and Advice for Founders 01:16:28 — 01:22:00 Hosts: Wickey Wang *IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty *Growth fund VC advisor, VC fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus *GAI Security book co-author & SafenAI co-founder Bill Sun AI Researcher, 1st who made transformer work on QA; Stanford Math PhD; Cofounder, Chief Scientist at PIN AI and Gen Alpha; Founding member of AGI house. Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913/] https://www.linkedin.com/in/qingyun-sun/

Innovator Coffee EP-33 What Jensen Really Announced: The Biggest Signals from GTC 2026

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends. In this episode of Innovator Coffee, we break down the biggest signals shaping the future of artificial intelligence from NVIDIA GTC 2026, one of the most influential AI conferences in the world. This year’s GTC made one thing clear: the AI narrative is shifting. The industry is moving beyond training larger models toward AI inference at scale, agentic AI systems, and real-world physical AI applications. We explore the rise of AI agents and digital workers, the trillion-dollar infrastructure opportunity behind inference, and why robotics and physical AI may be closer to mainstream adoption than many expect. From NVIDIA’s full-stack AI strategy to emerging constraints like compute, data, and power, this episode separates real trends from hype. Speaker Bio: Haibing Lu is a Professor and Co-Chair of Information Systems & Analytics at Santa Clara University. His research focuses on AI governance, cybersecurity, and data privacy. He is also Co-founder of AIConform, an AI-driven platform for enterprise compliance and responsible AI deployment. Elva He is a Data Science Consultant at Accenture, where she works on optimizing global data center infrastructure supporting the AI ecosystem. As a long-term AI investor, she has a front-row perspective on this rapid expansion. She is currently exploring Verto Mind, a wisdom-based emotional clarity platform. As part of the MIT Alumni Startup Founder Circle (S26 cohort), Elva draws on her background in complex systems to think about how, as machines grow smarter, our minds can grow stronger. Tim Li is the founder of DeepReach, building the data layer for Physical AI. Previously, he built HireIO, a global workforce solutions company that scaled to ~$15M ARR. At DeepReach, Tim is building systems that convert real-world signals into structured physical data, enabling machines to learn, generalize, and operate in real environments. Timeline (8 Chapters) 1️⃣ 00:00 – 03:20 Introduction & Guest Backgrounds 2️⃣ 03:20 – 07:45 From Training to Inference: The Real Shift 3️⃣ 07:45 – 10:30 The $1 Trillion AI Infrastructure Question 4️⃣ 10:30 – 17:40 The Rise of AI Agents & Digital Workers 5️⃣ 17:40 – 20:20 Will AI Replace Engineers? Not So Fast 6️⃣ 20:20 – 24:50 OpenCloud & The True Cost of AI Agents 7️⃣ 24:50 – 28:30 Physical AI & Robotics: Are We There Yet? 8️⃣ 28:30 – 38:20 The Bigger Picture: CUDA, AI Flywheel & What Comes Next Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/ Vicky who helps editing the podcast ⁠vickylan0004@gmail.com⁠ [vickylan0004@gmail.com] Hosts: Wickey Wang *IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty *Growth fund VC advisor, VC fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus *GAI Security book co-author & SafenAI co-founder Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913/⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913/]⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/]

Innovator Coffee EP-32 The Age of Agents: What RSAC 2026 Tells US About The Future of Cybersecurity

RSAC 2026 Live: When the World's Biggest Security Conference Became an AI Conference Over 40,000 people descended on San Francisco for RSAC 2026, and more than 600 exhibitors were talking about almost nothing but AI Agents. Fresh off the show floor, Wickey sits down with Jimmy Park of Forge Point Capital to debrief on the biggest signals from the year's most important security event This is a ground-level walkthrough of the entire expo floor, no hype, just signal. About the Host & Guest Host: Wickey Wang Co-host of Innovator Coffee and co-founder of SafenAI, Wickey focuses on ecosystem insights on AI and cybersecurity. She is also an IT Security & Compliance Leader, Growth fund VC advisor and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus Guest: Jimmy Park Investor at Forge Point Capital, where he focuses on early-stage cybersecurity and AI, typically leading Series A rounds. His career has taken him through three very different worlds：Korean Army Intelligence, Bank of America, and private equity Time Topic Content 00:00 – 03:30 Introductions Wickey opens with the RSAC 2026 theme; Jimmy introduces himself: Korean Army Intelligence → Bank of America → Private Equity → Forge Point Capital cybersecurity-focused investor, just back from RSA 03:31 – 08:25 The Big Shift: RSA Feels Like an AI Conference 600+ exhibitors with nearly every booth talking AI Agents; Jimmy's method: head straight to the Early Stage Expo to count companies and read taglines; last year it was LLM security, this year the same companies have pivoted to Agent security 08:26 – 11:20 The Non-Human Identity Explosion The conversation has evolved from "how many non-human identities do we have" to active remediation and governance of Agent Identity; major platforms like Okta and Microsoft entering the space; startups focusing on Key Rotation, Just-in-Time Access, and other proactive fix capabilities 11:21 – 14:57 AI SOC: 60+ Companies Chasing the Same LabelLevel 1/2 alert triage is the core use case; AI addresses the SOC's long-standing pain points — manually reviewing 10,000 alerts is impossible, and getting paged at 2am for a false positive is exhausting; large enterprises are moving from demos to real deployments this year 14:58 – 20:24 MCP and the Expanding Attack Surface MCP is emerging as the primary vector for AI agents, big AI labs building code security are doing it to sell more Claude, not to take over the cybersecurity market, the real story behind SaaS-Pocalypse 20:25 – 36:10 Five New Faces on the Show Floor AI Hacker (adaptive red-teaming for LLM applications); AI DevOps Engineer (shift-left all the way to code generation); Vibe Coding Security (AI-generated code has its own vulnerability patterns); ServiceNow acquires Veza (IT platforms going on offense in identity security); IBM quantum hardware on display (CISOs say it's not yet a top-five priority) 36:11 – 43:22 When Will the $10B AI Security Company Arrive?Being valued at $10B and being acquired for $10B are two very different things; private markets tend to overheat; the real test is IPO pricing and actual acquisition multiples. 43:23 – 49:16 Closing International cybersecurity rising (Italy and Korea debut their own national pavilions); the junior talent pipeline is breaking. Wickey's Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/chasing-polaris-wickey-s-blog-7430411601222193152/ Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. ⁠  / hannah-wang-9302421b3  ⁠ [https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbkxaS1ZCMWgyRWhJUUFLcU91NENHblhSQlZod3xBQ3Jtc0tuWWc3bnhUVXM5ajBGX3lrLXFkNnIwTm9TQjFXYjg0eE4wRXozenFJR0ZIZ09rZEE2WHgzUklaZXBLV1I3TjVpUi1aeXpKWjF5b2hTTWNNQ2ZWUnctTGp0RFd1X29zUU0ydmg2a3UxOUNRMXNxYm1OOA&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fhannah-wang-9302421b3%2F&v=9jPZwIBnVss]