Boris Sofman
Co-Founder and CEO, Bedrock Robotics. On 2 shows, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineerscientist@bsofman ↗LinkedIn ↗bedrockrobotics.com ↗
Boris Sofman is a roboticist and entrepreneur who leads Bedrock Robotics, developing retrofit autonomy systems for heavy construction equipment. He previously co-founded the consumer robotics company Anki and later served as Director of Engineering and Head of Trucking at Waymo.
2shows
1appearances
18statements
10resolved
8supported
1contradicted
80%fully supported
6said about them ↓ Everything Boris Sofman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Sofman: Autonomous construction machinery expands net jobs
“And in fact it's expansionary because you're actually creating jobs that wouldn't be done otherwise, but you have an ability to kind of move higher and higher level and create almost like a operating system for a general contractor to, Define the work they wan…”
Sofman: Waymo has driven 70M+ miles and is 5x safer than humans
“Today, like there's over seventy million miles and statistically it's five times safer than a human. It's like genuinely like it is saving lives from a, on a, from a statistical basis.”
Sofman: Autonomous earthmoving does not require perfect earth modeling
“The interesting thing is about these physics problems is you don't even have to like perfectly model the earth. You just want to be able to throw a diversity of circumstances and be able to kind of like test out your system.”
Sofman: Bedrock can retrofit heavy machines with autonomy in under four hours
“In a way that's totally reversible, it's non-invasive, and in less than four hours we can take a machine and upfit it to be, you know, to have the system on it.”
Sofman: Autonomous driving AI must optimize for worst case, not average case
“This is one of those where oftentimes you think of like AI or products where it's like, yeah, get it out there and iterate. This is one of those where you're optimizing for the worst case, not the average case. This isn't search where you give some bogus resul…”
Sofman: Every general contractor Bedrock speaks to turns down excess work
“Every single GC we talked to has more jobs that they could take on that they just, like, physically can't, and so when that happens, market forces come into play.”
Sofman: Physical industries represent 80% to 85% of GDP
“Like, 80, 85% of our GDP is physical industries. It's the physical world.”
Sofman: Every automaker will offer Level 2 or 3 autonomy in 3–4 years
“Every car company is going to have a level two, level three solution in the next three, four years.”
Sofman: Anki Reached Nearly $100M Revenue With 85% Concentrated in Q4
“It was 85% Q-four, and we were, like, kind of close to a hundred million in revenue, and so your cash flows are spiking up and down like crazy, and you're locking in forecasts and end of the summer for what you think is going to be the demand.”
Sofman: Anki's $150 Product Once Resold for $1,000 on eBay
“I remember one year we were the number one selling product on eBay, and the 150 dollar product was going for a thousand on eBay.”
Sofman: Up to 40% of construction workers will retire within 10 years
“The average age go above 50 the up to 40% of construction workers are retiring in the next 10 years”
Sofman: US heavy machinery logs 1.25 billion operator hours annually
“There's one and a quarter billion hours of operator time operating these heavy machines just in the US. So one and a quarter billion hours a year.”
Sofman: US excavation contracts total around $120 billion annually
“There was a study we saw that there's something like a hundred and twenty billion dollars of excavation contracts per year in the US.”
Sofman: Bedrock can retrofit existing heavy machinery without building vehicles
“These machines are actually beautifully designed to where we can upfit retrofit existing machines and go to market without a vehicle.”
Sofman: Excavators take 4–5 years to master due to seven degrees of freedom
“So the interesting thing is for humans, like excavators are one of the toughest machines. That's why it's like very high dimensional. There's like seven degrees of freedom and like, you know, you like all these subtle controls on the bucket, the body, the trea…”
Sofman: Bedrock is moving 600,000 cubic yards of earth for a paper factory
“We're collecting, we're working right now in a factory where you're, they have to move 600,000 cubic yards of earth to build a paper factory.”
Sofman: Earthwork execution makes or breaks profits on 1% margin DOT bids
“When you have like general contractors bidding on you know, a project for Department of Transportation in Texas or Arizona or something like that. They're bidding, they're winning the project by maybe like one percent. And the contingencies are very heavy on l…”
The other half of the tape: Boris Sofman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 1 episode across the shows. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Boris Soffman 1
Statements about Boris Sofman, by other people (3)
Sofman: Cute robot designs make users forgiving of technical mistakes
“And people become forgiving of any limitations or mistakes that the robot then makes.”
Sofman: Robotic manipulation lags autonomous driving by five to six years
“Manipulation is today is probably where autonomous driving was five or six years ago, where you can already see the capability starting to take form, but the reliability and cost constraints are still pretty prohibitive, but you can kind of extrapolate where i…”
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the a16z Podcast 3
2019 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Boris's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 AMERICAN OPTIMISTLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Bedrock Robotics | 1 | 18 | 75% 6/8 | full record on American Optimist → |
| a16zLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Bedrock Robotics | 0 | 0 | 100% 2/2 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |