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Encore: This CEO Says Humanoid Robots Are The "Space Race" of Our Time

26 December 2025 32:31 The Wall Street Journal

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About this episode

Who will take care of you in old age? Jeff Cardenas, the CEO and co-founder of Apptronik, says the answer is robots. The startup founder set out to build a smart, dexterous robot after watching his grandfathers grow old and dependent in their later years. Beyond healthcare, Cardenas sees robots as essential to U.S. economic growth and national security with applications across industries. Even with the latest advances in artificial intelligence and hardware, what will it take for humanoid robots to make the leap from science fiction to reality? On the latest episode of the Bold Names podcast, Cardenas tells WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins why Apptronik is betting it will create the home robot helper that everyone will want.

To watch the video version of this episode, visit our WSJ Podcasts YouTube channel or the video page of WSJ.com.

Check Out Past Episodes:

Condoleezza Rice on Beating China in the Tech Race: 'Run Hard and Run Fast'

Reid Hoffman Says AI Isn’t an ‘Arms Race,’ but America Needs to Win

Why This Investor Says the AI Boom Isn’t the Next Dot-Com Crash

How the U.S. Stacks Up to China’s ‘Engineering State’

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Read Christopher Mims’s Keywords column.Read Tim Higgins’s column. 

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