Boris Sofman

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Co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Robotics Inc.

Co-founder and ex-CEO of Anki, Inc.

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Anki's Boris Sofman - "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics" - D.I.C.E. 2014 Summit

Published on Feb 12, 2014

As an engineer and researcher with experience in building diverse robotic systems — from consumer products to off-road autonomous vehicles and bomb-disposal robots — Boris is making it his life's work to create products that people would not expect to be possible. He earned a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. Boris is an avid tennis player, but finds that anki doesn't allow him to play nearly as often as he'd like.

 

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Anki - Cozmo, Overdrive, Education, Healthcare and Animated Films

Published on Jan 20, 2017

I talk to Anki co-founder Boris Sofman about the direction of the company, venture capital investors, opportunities and risks in robotics and building technology that extends beyond entertainment to healthcare, research and education.

 

[Administrator]

Boris Sofman: Waymo, Cozmo, Self-Driving Cars, and the Future of Robotics | Lex Fridman Podcast #241

Nov 17, 2021

Boris Sofman is the Senior Director Of Engineering and Head of Trucking at Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car project. He was also the CEO and co-founder of Anki, a home robotics company.

Outline:

0:00 - Introduction
1:08 - Robots in science fiction
6:49 - Cozmo
32:04 - AI companions
38:59 - Anki
1:04:33 - Waymo Via
1:36:10 - Sensor suites for long haul trucking
1:46:06 - Machine learning
2:04:03 - Waymo vs Tesla
2:14:38 - Safety and risk management
2:23:42 - Societal effects of automation
2:34:47 - Amazon Astro
2:39:12 - Challenges of the robotics industry
2:43:39 - Humanoid robotics
2:50:42 - Advice for getting a PhD in robotics
2:58:13 - Advice for robotics startups
3:09:19 - Advice for students

 

[Administrator]

Bringing AI to Life: From Self-Driving Cars to Robots

Jul 16, 2025

Construction is a $2 trillion U.S. industry ($13 trillion globally) that impacts nearly every aspect of our lives. Yet, building has become too expensive and too slow to meet rising demand and aging infrastructure. What if we can apply breakthroughs from self-driving to construction? And what if we can use AI to operate heavy machinery autonomously 24/7?

This week, we bring the AI revolution into the physical world with Boris Sofman, co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Robotics. Founded by three former Waymo leaders, Bedrock emerged from stealth this week to bring autonomy to the construction industry. Boris earned his PhD in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon before founding Anki — a consumer robotics company that produced some of the world's most popular toy robots. After Anki was acquired by Google, Boris became Director of Engineering and Head of Trucking at Waymo, where he was instrumental in Waymo's successful deployment into major cities across the country.

We begin with his journey from the Soviet Union to the U.S. as a young boy, and how Boris fell in love with engineering. We discuss the consumer robotics wave and his time building Anki, before jumping into the race for self-driving cars. Get a rare look behind the scenes at Waymo and the extreme engineering challenges Boris and his team had to solve. Next, he reveals the recent developments that unlocked autonomy for heavy construction and the immense potential to transform the cost, quality, and speed of building in the U.S. Already, unions and special interests are lining up against these technologies; learn why Boris believes autonomy will unlock a wave of pent-up demand and create even more jobs and opportunities for humans. Bedrock is one the companies and teams I'm most bullish on, and you'll see why!

00:00 Episode intro
02:16 Soviet Union to robotics leader
06:57 Conquering self-driving at Waymo
14:38 Why leave Waymo to start Bedrock
19:10 How to make heavy machinery autonomous
24:06 AI breakthroughs that make this possible
31:06 Why autonomy will create jobs, not destroy them
37:44 The impact of the robotics revolution

 

[Administrator]

Yata Memorial Lecture : Boris Sofman : Journeys from Research to Commercialization

Apr 10, 2026

Boris Sofman
April 9, 2026
Journeys from Research to Commercialization: Lessons from Anki, Waymo, and Bedrock Robotics

Boris Sofman (Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, PhD, 2010) has experienced many stages of the company-building journey in robotics: founding startups from scratch, scaling products to mass market, and operating within one of the world’s most ambitious and expensive technology programs. At Anki, he took an idea from prototype to millions of consumer robots in homes around the world. At Waymo, he was part of the leadership team during the inflection point from a decade of R&D into one of the most dramatic commercial adoptions in tech history. Now, at Bedrock Robotics, he’s bringing autonomous systems to 50-ton construction machines to help America build infrastructure at an unprecedented speed and scale.

In this lecture, Boris will share an honest account of that journey and its lessons, including the energizing wins, the wrong turns and painful surprises, and the moments where an earlier experience turned out to matter more than expected. Closing with a deeper look at Bedrock, he will share why he believes autonomous construction is one of the most important problems robotics can tackle right now, driven by a unique convergence of maturing technology and critical industry need. For students at the beginning of their own paths, this is a talk about how a career in robotics and entrepreneurship might actually unfold, the many variables one navigates in the journey, and why the connections you cannot yet see may end up being the most valuable ones.

About the Lecture: The Yata Memorial Lecture in Robotics is presented by the Robotics Institute, in conjunction with the SCS Distinguished Lecture Series. Teruko Yata was a postdoctoral fellow in the Robotics Institute from 2000 until her untimely death in 2002. After graduating from the University of Tsukuba, working under the guidance of Prof. Yuta, she came to the United States. At Carnegie Mellon, she served as a post-doctoral fellow in the Robotics Institute for three years, under Chuck Thorpe. Teruko’s accomplishments in the field of ultrasonic sensing were highly regarded and won her the Best Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in 1999. It was frequently noted, and we always remember, that “the quality of her work was exceeded only by her kindness and thoughtfulness as a friend.” Join us in paying tribute to our extraordinary colleague and friend through this most unique and always exciting lecture.