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The OPTIM Update
The OPTIM Update

Building the Foundry for Physical AI | Mike Xia, Anvil Robotics

25 May 2026 43:12 Bogdan Cristei

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About this episode

Mike Xia is the co-founder and CEO of Anvil Robotics - building the foundry for physical AI. They make the hardware, software, and data tools that let robotics teams go from zero to model training in days vs months. They've shipped over 100 robots, manufacture in Taiwan, and just raised a $6.5M seed round. Mike gets into the economics of building and shipping a $5,000 arm, why most teams are fighting their own hardware before they can even start on AI, and what's structurally broken in the supply chain that not enough people talk about.

We cover:
00:00 - Intro
00:45 - What physical AI teams actually go through before training a model
03:16 - Why the existing robot stack was built for a different era
04:10 - What it's actually like setting up an SO-100 at home
05:21 - The leap from toy arms to real payloads
08:01 - What you get on day one with an Anvil dev kit
09:12 - What kilohertz-rate sensor fusion actually unlocks
11:19 - The false tradeoff between payload and force compliance
14:35 - Why vision alone isn't enough: the dentist analogy
16:15 - The economics of a $5,000 arm
20:01 - Scaling from 150 robots to 200 a month
21:30 - Why all customers came inbound
22:10 - Retention and repeat orders
24:47 - If open source isn't the moat, what is?
28:15 - Why the supply chain is a relationship, not a transaction
28:36 - How to do customization without becoming a services company
31:30 - How many of 1,500 new robotics startups survive 24 months?
34:52 - The most technically wrong thing teams are doing in 2026
38:57 - What happens when your whole fleet breaks and you don't know why
40:40 - What will look obvious in five years
42:29 - Where to learn more about Anvil

Anvil Robotics: https://anvil.bot

The OPTIM Update covers real-world AI, automation, robotics, industrial systems and AI Infrastructure for founders, investors, and operators.

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