Waymo Pioneer Sebastian Thrun Building New Robotics Startup Dulo

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Sebastian Thrun, the engineer who founded and led Alphabet's self-driving-car project before it became Waymo, is developing a new robotics venture called Dulo. Thrun confirmed the venture to attendees at the Actuate robotics conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, saying it is under stealth and very small but in robotics. A Stanford-hosted webpage states that Dulo is developing foundation models for hardware design aimed at enabling manufacturing at lightspeed, with a team including alumni from Waymo, Google Brain and Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Thrun's move comes amid a robotics boom, with physical AI startups raising a record $16.3 billion across 492 deals in the first quarter of 2026, according to PitchBook data.

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Thrun's new robotics venture Dulo is the subject, developing foundation models for hardware design.

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