Opinion
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…”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Insight
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.”
Assertion Open · timeframe Jul 2028
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.”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Supported
Sofman: Physical industries represent 80% to 85% of GDP
“Like, 80, 85% of our GDP is physical industries. It's the physical world.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2029
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Assertion Contradicted
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.”
Assertion Partly supported
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”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Insight
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…”
Disclosure
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.”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Supported
Sofman: Early CMU robotics talent seeded Waymo, Aurora, and Uber ATG
“A lot of the people around that time ended up being the seeds that then propagated to all the, Grand Challenge, Urban Challenge, and then Waymo, Aurora, Uber, ATG.”
