Agenda - AUTONOMOUS

Thursday • JULY 16, 2026

Full day schedule

Two stages. Four content tracks. One day of the most substantive programming in physical Al.

8:00 AM -

9:00 AM

PDT

Registration & Breakfast

Doors open. Grab coffee and breakfast, pick up your badge, and start the morning among the founders, engineers, and investors building the future of physical AI.

9:00 AM -

9:10 AM

PDT

Opening Remarks

FRONTIER STAGE

A quick welcome and the lay of the land before a full day of robotics and physical AI.

Rohan Savla

Founder, AUTONOMOUS

9:10 AM -

9:30 AM

PDT

One Brain, Any Body

FRONTIER STAGE

Keynote

The opening shot: a single foundation model that can drive any robot body. Why “omni-bodied” intelligence – not one robot at a time – is the unlock, and what it means for everyone building in physical AI.

Deepak Pathak

CEO, Skild AI

9:30 AM -

9:55 AM

PDT

Robots That Learn by Watching the World

FRONTIER STAGE

Keynote

A fresh, billion-dollar counter-thesis: robots that learn to act by predicting what happens next, frame by frame, instead of being told in language. Teaching machines to anticipate the physical world.

Andrew Wooten

Co-Founder & CPO, Rhoda AI

9:30 AM -

9:55 AM

PDT

Driverless Freight, Built Inside a Global Truckmaker

BUILDER STAGE

Fireside Chat

The contrarian path to self-driving trucks: build the autonomy inside the truck maker, not as an outsider. The capital-disciplined road to driver-out freight.

Abhirup Roy

U.S. Autos Correspondent, Reuters

Peter Vaughan Schmidt

CEO, Torc Robotics

9:55 AM -

10:15 AM

PDT

World Models: The Bridge From Self-Driving to Every Robot

FRONTIER STAGE

Presentation

From perceiving humans in 3D to self-driving to general robotics, why “world models” that imagine the physical world may be the connective tissue of all embodied AI.

Jamie Shotton

Chief Scientist, Wayve

9:55 AM -

10:15 AM

PDT

Rebuilding the Factory: Physical AI on the Production Line

BUILDER STAGE

Panel

Can AI actually rebuild American manufacturing, or is it still a demo? Three builders on what’s shipping on the production line today, and what reshoring really takes.

Chris Chen

Co-CEO, Robotics, Faraday Future

Junfan Zhu

Founder, Saturday Robotics

Adarsh Kulkarni

CEO, Foundry Robotics

Lukas Pankau

CEO, Industrial Next

10:15 AM -

10:45 AM

PDT

Networking Break

Refuel and connect. Coffee, conversation, and a chance to find the people you came to meet.

10:45 AM -

11:10 AM

PDT

Self-Driving Excavators: Autonomy Comes to the Jobsite

FRONTIER STAGE

Fireside Chat

The team teaching heavy machines to drive themselves. Why the construction site may be the next great frontier for real-world autonomy.

Rya Jetha

Sr Reporter, Business Insider

Kevin Peterson

CTO, Bedrock Robotics

10:45 AM -

11:05 AM

PDT

What It Takes to Run a Robot Fleet

BUILDER STAGE

Presentation

A rare founder who has put physical robots into messy real-world venues at fleet scale, and the hard-won economics of robots-as-a-service: what actually pencils, and what breaks.

John Ha

CEO, Bear Robotics

11:10 AM -

11:35 AM

PDT

Where Robots Learn Before the Real World

FRONTIER STAGE

Technical Deep Dive

Robots have to practice in simulated worlds before the real one, but building those worlds takes weeks. A look at generating endless, varied training environments from a simple prompt.

Fan-Yun Sun

CEO, Moonlake AI

Sharon Lee

Co-Founder, Moonlake AI

11:05 AM -

11:35 AM

PDT

The Models Behind Physical AI

BUILDER STAGE

Panel

Everyone is racing to build robot brains, but the real bottleneck is the data and models that train them. Three very different views on where it comes from and who owns the moat.

Eesha Pathak

Sr Director of Product Management, Crusoe

Tejes Srivalsan

Founder, Abundance

Ivan Poupyrev

CEO, Archetype AI

Sammy Sidhu

CEO, Eventual

Peter Wilczynski

Chief Product Officer, Vantor

11:35 AM -

12:00 PM

PDT

Orchestrating a Thousand Robots

FRONTIER STAGE

Fireside Chat

A robotics pioneer who imagined “cloud robotics” 15 years ago now runs physical AI at warehouse scale, where embodied AI grows up, coordinating thousands of robots on the floor.

Harry McCracken

Global Tech Editor, Fast Company

James Kuffner

CTO, Symbotic

11:35 AM -

12:00 PM

PDT

Beyond the Road: Drones, Sidewalks & The Last Mile

BUILDER STAGE

Panel

Autonomy is not just cars. The robots quietly solving the last mile, flying and rolling, and the hardest validation problems in the field.

Harry Mellsop

Co-Founder, Antioch

Rajesh Radhakrishnan

VP Autonomy, Serve Robotics

Juraj Kabzan

VP Autonomy, Skydio

12:00 PM -

1:00 PM

PDT

Lunch

A lunch built for connection. Eat, network, and trade notes with the room.

1:00 PM -

1:35 PM

PDT

Startup Showcase

FRONTIER STAGE

Presentation

The post-lunch jolt: live robots and hands on stage, and fast pitches from the startups building the next physical-AI products.

Aadeel Akhtar

CEO, PSYONIC

Kevin Damoa

CEO, Glīd

Amos Miller

CEO, Glidance

Grace Brown

CEO, Andromeda

1:00 PM -

1:30 PM

PDT

Physical AI in the Supply Chain

BUILDER STAGE

Panel

Navigation feels solved; grabbing a random box from a messy trailer still is not. The multi-billion-dollar frontier of manipulation and fulfillment, from the companies cracking it.

Daniel Theobald

Founder, Vecna Robotics

Samir Menon

CEO, Dexterity

Akash Gupta

CEO, GreyOrange

AJ Meyer

CEO, Pickle Robot

1:35 PM -

2:05 PM

PDT

Deploying Robots at Real-World Scale

FRONTIER STAGE

Panel

Past the highlight reel: laser-weeding farms, solar-building robots, and the safety layer that lets any fleet run. What “at scale” actually means.

Tessa Lau

CEO, Dusty Robotics

Michelle Sun

Founder, Core Matter Labs

Samuel Reeves

CEO, FORT Robotics

Noah Ready Campbell

CEO, Built Robotics

Paul Mikesell

CEO, Carbon Robotics

1:35 PM -

2:05 PM

PDT

Building a Robotics Team That Ships

BUILDER STAGE

Panel

Building robots is hard; building teams that ship them is harder. How top robotics leaders hire, align, and execute across hardware, software, and operations to deliver in the real world.

Rishabh Aggarwal

CTO, Raise Robotics

Mai Bui

CEO, Quarter20

Reed Ginsberg

CTO, Shinkei Systems

Jari Safi

VP, AI & CV, Simbe Robotics

2:05 PM -

2:35 PM

PDT

Where the Money Goes: Betting on Physical AI

FRONTIER STAGE

Panel

The investors writing the checks on the room’s central question: is physical AI the next great venture frontier, or the next bubble?

Steve Jacobs

Partner, Drumbeat Capital

James Hardiman

General Partner, DCVC

Kanu Gulati

Partner, Khosla Ventures

Bilal Zuberi

Managing Partner, Red Glass

2:05 PM -

2:35 PM

PDT

The Robot Harvest: Autonomy Comes to the Farm

BUILDER STAGE

Panel

A labor crisis, GPS-denied dust, and thin margins: why the farm is one of the toughest and most real proving grounds for autonomy.

Ricky Stephens

Head of Business Development, RESERVOIR

Leonardo Carvalho

Global CSO, Solinftec

John Macdonald

Head of AI, Bonsai Robotics

Vibhor Sood

Co-Founder, Burro

2:35 PM -

3:15 PM

PDT

Roundtables

The part everyone talks about afterward. Pull up to a table on the topic you care about most, such as fundraising, hiring, deployment, or the humanoid debate, and dig in with peers. No panel, just the conversations you came for.

3:15 PM -

3:40 PM

PDT

Factories at the Speed of Software

FRONTIER STAGE

Fireside Chat

The “robotic blacksmith”: AI-driven robots that form metal with no dies and no fixed tooling, turning the factory itself into something you can reprogram.

Rya Jetha

Sr Reporter, Business Insider

Ed Mehr

CEO, Machina Labs

3:15 PM -

3:40 PM

PDT

Building the Fully Autonomous Tractor

BUILDER STAGE

Panel

A rare both-sides view: how a software startup and a 135-year-old equipment maker actually co-build autonomy, the partnership most founders dream about and most OEMs fear.

Brett McMickell

CTO, Kubota North America

Tim Bucher

CEO, Agtonomy

3:40 PM -

4:15 PM

PDT

The Humanoid Moment: Real or Overhyped?

FRONTIER STAGE

Fireside Chat

The year’s most-hyped topic, with a contrarian builder making a high-stakes second act. An honest look at where humanoids are real, and where they are narrative.

Rocket Drew

AI Reporter, The Information

Sankaet Pathak

CEO, Foundation

3:40 PM -

4:10 PM

PDT

The Race to Driverless Freight

BUILDER STAGE

Panel

Three trucking competitors and the compute and safety layers beneath them, debated by an AV-safety expert: the cost, the timeline, and the safety case for pulling the driver.

Kishore Veerashekar

Investor, Plug & Play Ventures

Christian Stano

Field CTO, Anyscale

Shubham Shrivastava

Head of AI, Kodiak AI

Andrew Culhane

CCO, Torc Robotics

Xiaodi Hou

CEO, Bot Auto

4:10 PM -

4:30 PM

PDT

Autonomy in the Wild

FRONTIER STAGE

Presentation

Robots dropped onto a site they’ve never seen, no map, no GPS, that just work. Closing the day on the frontier of real-world autonomy.

Shayegan Omidshafiei

Chief Scientist, FieldAI

4:30 PM -

4:50 PM

PDT

Deploying general-purpose robots

FRONTIER STAGE

Keynote

Russ Tedrake has been on the front lines building Physical AI for years as a Professor at MIT and an SVP at the Toyota Research Institute. We’re at the dawn of the age of general-purpose robots, with the field now focused on moving out of the lab and into real production manufacturing environments. Russ will share his inside perspective on how this new phase of robotics is unfolding, what is real versus what is still hard, and how to mesh the tech with how manufacturing works today.

Russ Tedrake

CEO, Walden Robotics

4:50 PM -

5:00 PM

PDT

Closing Remarks

FRONTIER STAGE

Final remarks from the founder of AUTONOMOUS.

Rohan Savla

Founder, AUTONOMOUS

5:00 PM -

6:00 PM

PDT

Happy Hour

Drinks, robots, and the best conversations of the day. Wind down with the founders, operators, and investors who showed up to build the future.

6:00 PM -

9:00 PM

PDT

AUTONOMOUS 2026 Official Afterparty

Moonlake AI is hosting the official happy hour post AUTONOMOUS 2026. Sign up here!

Moonlake AI

Official Afterparty, Don’t miss it!