AI Insiders x Swissnex: Robotics & Automation

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An exclusive evening connecting Swiss and American innovators and turning ideas into live demos, dialogues, and partnerships.

Industrial arms now learn in simulation before lifting a part, humanoids walk factory floors, and autonomous fleets map the globe in real time. This is Embodied Intelligence: AI in physical form, adapting and collaborating in real time.

This shift is as much societal as it is technological: How we invest, design, regulate, and integrate these systems will shape the future of work, logistics, manufacturing, creativity, and daily life.

AI Insiders and Swissnex in San Francisco are bringing together leading voices in robotics for an invite-only gathering of experts. This exclusive event connects Swiss and American innovators, from Swiss labs to Silicon Valley startups, for an evening where ideas turn into live demos, dialogues, and partnerships.

The event is part of Embodied Intelligence, Swissnex in San Francisco’ one-week program that welcomes Swiss-based startups, researchers and thinkers, to explore and shape the future of Robotics and physical AI.

AI Insiders is not a traditional conference; it’s a vertical intelligence network for vertical experts. Each salon zooms in on a single sector so the conversation goes deep, fast.

Program

5:30pm – Doors open
6:00pm – Welcome Word by Merve Isler, Founder & CEO at Marvelous, Creator at AI Insiders and Maulde Cuérel, AI Program Manager, Swissnex in San Francisco
6:10pm – Keynote 1: Franziska Bossart, Head of Amazon $1B Industrial Innovation Fund and Director Corporate Development
6:25pm – Keynote 2
6:40pm – Panel: Investing in the Future
7:10pm – Startup Pitches (Roman Dautzenberg, Co-Founder, AITHON Robotics / Nikhil Ramaswamy, Co-Founder, CynLr / Mattis Koh, COO/Co-Founder, MESH Robotic Construction)
8:00pm – Networking
9:00pm – Event ends

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Event start time

San Francisco
5:30PM

Speakers

Bio

Franziska Bossart
Head of Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Amazon
Franziska Bossart is the Head of the $1B Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund (AIIF). She sets the AIIF’s vision and strategy, supporting emerging technology companies through direct investments. Franziska joined Amazon in 2023. She brings more than 20 years of executive experience specializing in corporate venture capital and digital transformation, having worked at global Corporate Venture Capital funds, managing technology investment portfolios.
Bio

Loris Roveda
Senior Researcher, IDSIA USI-SUPSI
Loris Roveda is a Senior Researcher at IDSIA USI-SUPSI and an Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano, working in the field of robotics and AI. He got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2015 at Politecnico di Milano. His research interests are related to humanoid robotics, ML for robot modeling and control, human-robot interaction, and exoskeleton design and control.
Bio

John Robins
Head of Physical AI
With over 18 years of experience in product management and growth strategy, John bridges the physical and digital worlds to help clients create impactful deep-tech products. At Synapse, he focuses on IoT, edge AI, robotics, and geospatial solutions delivering value across every stage of innovation in industries spanning high tech, manufacturing and consumer & retail. Previously, John led product management at a large consumer electronics company and ran an industrial IoT startup. He’s also a Gartner Product Management Ambassador.
Bio

Lu Zhang
Founder & Managing Partner
Lu Zhang, Founder and Managing Partner of Fusion Fund, is a renowned Silicon Valley-based investor, a serial entrepreneur, and a Stanford Engineering alumna. With a strong technical background, Lu has extensive experience bringing a broad range of technologies to commercialization, and deep domain expertise in AI in healthcare, Enterprise AI/Networks, Edge Computing and Data Privacy. Founded by Lu in 2015, Fusion Fund is dedicated to supporting early-stage entrepreneurs working on innovation in healthcare, enterprise AI and industrial automation. With investments in over 90 companies across the U.S. and Canada, Fusion Fund has generated substantial exits over the years.

Prior to starting Fusion Fund, Lu was a serial entrepreneur and materials science researcher. Following the exit of her startup, Lu began investing in and supporting early-stage entrepreneurs. This eventually led her to create Fusion Fund in 2015. Since then, Lu has built a distinguished ecosystem and established her reputation in the VC industry. She was honored as Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum (Davos), Silicon Valley Women of Influence, Top 25 Female early-stage investor by Business Insider, Featured Honoree of VC of Forbes 30 under 30 and Town & Country 50 Modern Swans – Entrepreneurship Influencer.

Lu frequently speaks at high profile tech conferences such as World Economic Forum(Davos), Future Investment Initiative (FII), Web Summit, SuperReturn, etc. and she is a guest lecturer at Stanford University and Wharton. Lu serves as a board member of many portfolio companies, the Board Director of CommonSpirit Health Foundation, the Board and Chairwoman of the Youth Council of Future Science Award, and Jury Board of the Cartier Women Initiative and Young Leader Award. She holds an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
Bio

Anto Patrex
CEO, Cosmicbrain AI
Anto Patrex is the founder and CEO of CosmicBrain, a robotics company using world-scale simulation models to train intelligent robots for real-world work. A repeat founder and applied-AI builder, he focuses on turning high-quality task data into production-ready robotic capability.
Bio

Benjamin Bolte
Founder & CEO, K-Scale Labs
Benjamin Bolte is the founder and CEO of K-Scale Labs (YC W24), an open-source humanoid-robotics company. He previously worked as an AI researcher/engineer at Tesla, Meta, Google, and Amazon, including deploying an autoregressive transformer for Tesla Autopilot and contributing CUDA kernels used in Optimus’s early perception stack.