Ex-Tesla founders' Industrial Next says its robot cells retool for new tasks in minutes, with BMW evaluating

Industrial Next, a San Francisco company founded in 2021 by former Tesla engineers Lukas Pankau and Allen Pan, presented at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield on Oct 13 self-contained robot stations driven by its own foundation models that it says can be retaught for a new task in minutes through simulation and demonstration instead of weeks of programming, TechCrunch reported.

The company told the outlet that BMW Group's Technology Office is evaluating its dexterous manipulation and that some stations already help assemble an unnamed major smartphone, threading flex cables, seating connector caps and peeling film from camera modules; the article cited 100% accuracy on the film-peeling station, a company figure not confirmed in a release, and no funding was disclosed.

BMW already runs Figure's F.03 humanoid at Spartanburg and piloted Hexagon's AEON in Leipzig in February, according to earlier MEKAWIRE reporting.