Many companies focus on building robots or hardware components that help them move, grab objects, or interact with the world around them. Silicon Valley-based OpenMind focuses on what’s under the hood.
OpenMind develops OM1 software for humanoid robots that acts as an operating system. The company compares itself to Android for robotics because its software is open source and does not depend on hardware.
Stanford professor Ian Lipphardt, the founder of OpenMind, told TechCrunch that humanoids and other robots have been around for decades and are capable of performing repetitive tasks. But now that humanoids are being developed for use cases that require more human-machine interaction, such as having a humanoid at home, they need a new operating system that thinks more like a human.
“Suddenly, a world is opening up where machines are able to interact with humans in a way that I’ve definitely never seen before,” said Lipphardt. “We really believe that it’s not just about people, but we really think of ourselves as a company that is the result of collaboration between machines and people.”
On Monday, OpenMind unveiled a new protocol called FABRIC, which allows robots to verify identity and share context and information with other robots.
According to Lipphardt, unlike humans, machines can learn almost instantly, which means that giving them a better way to communicate with other robots will allow them to train and learn new information more easily.
Lipphardt cited the example of languages and how robots can communicate with each other and share data on how to speak different languages, which will help them better interact with more people without the need for each language to be taught directly by humans.
“Humans take for granted that they can interact with any other human on Earth,” said Lipphardt. “Humans have built a lot of infrastructure around us that allows us to trust other people, to call them, to text them, to interact, to coordinate, and to do things together. Machines, of course, will be no different.”
OpenMind was founded in 2024 and is preparing to ship its first fleet of 10 OM1-based robotic dogs in September. Lipphardt said he is a big believer in the fact that technology can be implemented and iteratively improved after the fact.
“We fully expect that all the people who will be operating these quadrupeds will come back with a long list of things they didn’t like or want, and then we can iterate on the machines very, very quickly,” he said.
The company also recently raised a $20 million funding round led by Pantera Capital with participation from Ribbit, Coinbase Ventures, and Pebblebed, among other strategic investors and angel investors.
The company is now focused on getting its technology into people’s homes and starting product iterations.
“The most important thing for us is to get the robots out into the world and get feedback,” says Liphardt. “Our goal as a company is to conduct as many of these tests as possible so that we can very quickly identify the most interesting opportunities where the capabilities of modern robots are optimally combined with what humans are looking for.”
