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[ARTICLE · art-84842] src=news.ycombinator.com ↗ pub= topic=robotics verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Can a robotics startup survive by pivoting from hardware to data scraping?

Tangible, a robotics startup that originally built the Eggie humanoid robot, has pivoted to building an AI foundation model for robotics and is now scraping over 1 million hours of POV video from the internet, according to public posts from one of its engineers. The company has laid off approximately 50% of its team, leaving fewer than 10 people, and is burning significant GPU hours while models only work for basic tasks, raising questions about the viability of this pivot.

read1 min views1 publishedAug 3, 2026

| |||||||||||| 1 point by | According to public posts from one of their engineers, they're now: · Scraping 1M+ hours of POV video from the internet · Burning significant GPU hours while models only work for basic tasks · Down to <10 people after laying off ~50% of the team This raises a broader question: · Is scraping public video a viable long-term data strategy, or a dead end? · Are there examples of hardware companies that successfully made this pivot? They originally built Eggie, a multipurpose humanoid robot, but Tangible has since pivoted to building an AI foundation model for robotics. | ||||||||||| Applications are open till July 27. |

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