Agenda | silicon valley 2026
MAIN STAGE
Day 1
december 1
8:00 AM: Registration and Networking Breakfast
8:30 AM: Welcome and Opening Remarks
Speaker: Modar Alaoui, General Partner at ALM Ventures and Founder & Chair at Humanoids Summit.
8:40 AM: Event Overview
Speaker: Eileen Leman, Robotics Practice Attorney at Cooley LLP and MC at Humanoids Summit Silicon Valley.
8:45 AM: Opening Keynote
“Embodied AI: Building Intelligence for the Real World”.
Speaker: Jeff Cardenas, Co-Founder and CEO at Apptronik.
9:15 AM: Presentation
“Scaling Robotics Adoption: From Innovation to Industrial Deployment”.
Speaker: Ram Devarajulu, VP and Head of Robotics at Cambridge Consultants.
9:35 AM: Presentation
“Any Robot, Any Task: One Brain”.
Speaker: Abhinav Gupta, Co-Founder at Skild AI.
9:55 AM: Presentation
“From Tesla Roadster Rocket to Robotics: Turning Simulation into Reality”.
Speaker: James Crook, Former Lead Aerodynamicist, Tesla Roadster, and Formula 1 Engineer.
10:15 AM: Networking Break
10:30 AM: Fireside Chat
”The Humanoid Economy: Designing the Next Industrial Revolution”.
Moderator: Anna Tong, AI & Tech Reporter at Forbes.
Speaker: Modar Alaoui, General Partner, ALM Ventures and Founder & Chair, Humanoids Summit
11:00 AM: Presentation
“General-Purpose Robot Brains: A New Era of Industrial AI”.
Speaker: Ali Agha, Founder and CEO at FieldAI.
11:20 AM: Presentation
“Deployment Year One: Accelerating a New Era of Productivity with Embodied AI”.
Speaker: Patrick Gao, Vice President at AGIBOT Americas.
11:40 AM: Presentation
“The Bay Area at the Center of Physical AI: Building a Global Ecosystem of Innovation, Capital, and Industry”.
Speaker: Terence Bennett, Executive Director, Bay Area Robotics Association (BARA).
12:00 PM: Lunch Break
1:00 PM: Afternoon Keynote
“Humanoid Robots Beyond Earth: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration in Space”.
Speaker: Shaun Azimi, Robotics Lead, NASA Johnson Space Center.
1:30 PM: Presentation
“VLA vs WAM: Do Robots Need to Predict the World, or Just the Next Action?”
Speaker: Ben Burchfiel, Co-Founder & CTO of Walden Robotics.
1:50 PM: Presentation
“Forces Are the Language of Manipulation: Why Robots Need More Than Vision and Language”.
Speaker: Pulkit Agrawal, Co-Founder at Eka Robotics.
2:10 PM: Presentation
“From Simulation to Real World: Building the Infrastructure Embodied AI Needs to Work Anywhere”.
Speaker: Kit Gilbert, VP, General Manager of Embodied AI, Niantic Spatial.
2:30 PM: Panel Discussion
”Recursive Self-Improvement: When AI Starts Building Better AI”.
Moderator: Tech reporter
Panelists: Jason Ma, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Dyna Robotics, others,
3:00 PM: Networking Break
3:15 PM: Presentation
”Safety as a Competitive Advantage: 100 Years of Lessons for the Humanoid Boom”.
Speakers: Elliot Kaye, Partner at Cooley LLP & Former Chairman of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission; Ryan Vann, Partner at Cooley LLP.
3:35 PM: Startup Presentations
Fast-paced and focused presentations, featuring startups from across the humanoid and physical AI ecosystem presenting exciting new technologies and key insights.
“Humanoids in the Aisle: Automating the Night Shift.”
Samarth Malhotra, Co-Founder & CEO, Theseus Robotics (YC F26).
“4D World Models: Building Spatial Intelligence for Physical AI with ChronoSpace.”
Srinath Sridhar, Co-Founder and CEO, at ChronoSpace (a16z Speedrun SR007).
“Relational Risk in Humanoid Robotics: The Missing Layer in Human-Robot Design”.
Sara Filipčić, Founder & Executive Director, and Roshni Lulla, Co-Founder & Chief Research Officer, Institute for Humane Robotics.
“Safe Physical AI: Unlocking Industrial Robot Productivity at Scale.”
Denis Azarov, Founder and CEO at ScaleDrive (a16z Speedrun SR007).
“From 77 Robots to Real-World Impact: How Humanoid Robots Are Moving Beyond Demonstrations.”
Xiaoyin Wang, Co-Founder & CEO at NexAurora Robotics.
"Giving Robots a Sense of Touch”.
Cosima du Pasquier, Co-Founder & CEO at Haptica Robotics.
“What 21 factories taught us about deploying physical AI.”
Husan Mavlonov, Co-founder & CEO at Defex Robotics.
“When should a humanoid approach, speak, or wait? A human interaction layer for Physical AI.”
Veronika Kalneus, Founder & CEO, IntSense; Aleksandr Laptev, Co-Founder & CTO, IntSense.
4:35 PM: Panel Discussion
“Betting on Physical AI: The Investment Case for Humanoid Robots”.
Moderator: Rya Jetha, Robotics and Physical AI Senior Tech Reporter at Business Insider.
Panelists: Kahini Shah, Partner at Obvious Ventures; Ankur Saxena, Investment Director, TDK Ventures; Betsy Mulé, Principal at F-Prime Capital.
5:00 PM: Closing Remarks
Speaker: Eileen Leman, Robotics Practice Attorney at Cooley LLP and MC at Humanoids Summit Silicon Valley.
6:00 - 8:30 PM: VIP Reception
For VIP ticket holders. An exclusive gathering with live music, chef-prepared hors d’oeuvres, and roaming humanoids.
Location: Redwood Hall, San Mateo Event Center.
Day 2
december 2
8:00 AM: Breakfast and Networking
8:30 AM: Opening Keynote
”From Language to Motion: How Gemini Powers the Next Generation of Helpful Robots"
Speaker: Carolina Parada, VP & Head of Robotics at Google DeepMind.
9:00 AM: Presentation
“The Next Frontier of Physical AI: Humanoid Robots at Scale”.
Speaker: Pras Velagapudi, CTO at Agility Robotics.
9:20 AM: Fireside Chat
”America’s Robotics Future: Building a National Strategy for Humanoids”.
Speakers: Jeff Burnstein, President, Association for Advancing Automation (A3), and Modar Alaoui, General Partner at ALM Ventures and Founder & Chair at Humanoids Summit.
9:45 AM: Presentation
”Twisted Cables, Worn-Out Connectors: How Long Will Your Humanoid Actually Last?”.
Speaker: YoungDong (YD) Kim, Founder & CEO, Uniqconn.
10:05 AM: Presentation
”Solving Five-Finger Dexterity: RLDX’s Approach to Industry-Level Manipulation”.
Speaker: Carl Choi, President at RLWRLD U.S.
10:20 AM: Networking Break
10:35 AM: Panel Discussion
”Humanoids and the Law: FCC Restrictions, Safety, and Regulation”.
Moderator: Tech Reporter.
Panelists: Henry Wendel, Attorney at Cooley LLP; Samuel Reeves, Founder and CEO at FORT Robotics; others.
11:00 AM: Presentation
“The Hardware Behind Humanoid Intelligence: Sensing, Connectivity, and Motion”.
Speaker: Nithin Narayanan, General Manager, Business Development, Murata.
11:20 AM: Presentation
“The Data Bottleneck: What Physical AI Needs to Scale”.
Speaker: Mokshith Voodarla, Co-Founder & CEO, Sieve.
11:40 AM: Presentation
“Advanced Bionic Hands for Humans and Robots”.
Speaker: Aadeel Akhtar, Founder and CEO at Psyonic.
12:00 PM: Lunch Break
1:00 PM: Afternoon Keynote
“Uniting Developers to Drive Productivity Evolution”.
Speaker: Chaoyi Li, Head of Globalization at Booster Robotics.
1:30 PM: Presentation
”Honda's Journey Toward Dexterous Humanoid Manipulation”.
Speaker: Soshi Iba, Chief Engineer at Honda R&D, and Division Director of the Intelligence Robotics Research.
1:50 PM: Presentation
"Building the Continuous Learning Infrastructure for Physical AI”.
Speaker: Steve Xie, Founder & CEO, Lightwheel.
2:10 PM: Presentation
“How Performance Standards Can Pave the Way for Humanoid Adoption”.
Speaker: Kamel Saidi, Robotics Program Manager, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
2:30 PM: Presentation
“The New American Factory: How Physical AI Is Reinventing Manufacturing“.
Speaker: Adarsh Kulkarni, Co-Founder & CEO, Foundry Robotics.
2:50 PM: Presentation
“Solving Manipulation with Hardware, Data, and AI – Proception’s Approach”
Speaker: Jay Li, Founder and CEO at Proception.
3:10 PM: Networking Break
3:25 PM: Panel Discussion
“Physical AI Beyond Perception: Spatial Intelligence and World Models”.
Moderator: Tech Reporter.
Speakers: Ali Agha, Founder and CEO at FieldAI; Ivan Poupyrev, Founder and CEO at Archetype AI; other panelists.
4:00 PM: Presentation
”Direct Video-Action Models: A New Paradigm for Robot Intelligence”.
Speaker: Eric Chan, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Rhoda AI.
4:20 PM: Presentation
“Where Robots Learn Before the Real World“.
Speaker: Fan-Yun Sun, Co-Founder & CEO, Moonlake AI.
4:40 PM: Presentation
”The Infrastructure Behind Humanoids: Actuators, Hands, Sensors, and Compute”.
Speaker: TBD.
5:00 PM: Closing Remarks
Speaker: Eileen Leman, Robotics Practice Attorney at Cooley LLP and MC at Humanoids Summit Silicon Valley.
agenda — Breakout session
Parallel Breakout Sessions: Focused and Expert-Led.
Adjacent to the main conference hall, this space offers deeper dives into specialized topics in humanoid robotics, featuring intimate talks, direct speaker access, and fresh insights that complement the main stage.
Breakout sessions run on Day 2, December 2, only.
Day 2 - morning
December 2
8:00 AM: Breakfast and Networking
10:00 AM: Presentation
”The Future of Work: Robots as Service Sector Partners”
Speaker: Andrew Kiguel, CEO at Realbotix.
10:15 AM: Networking Break
10:30 AM: Presentation
“Scaling Humanoid Robot through Automotive Engineering Methodologies.”
Speaker: Dirk Eulitz, Director New Technology at Kautex.
10:45 AM: Presentation
”The Emerging Safety Architecture for Physical AI: Integrating Functional Safety, SOTIF, and AI Assurance.”
Speaker: Jody Nelson, Managing Partner at SecuRESafe.
11:00 AM: Presentation
”Evolution of the Sensor Stack on Humanoids.”
Speaker: Sashi Reddi, Co-Founder and CEO at DreamVu.
11:15 AM: Presentation
”Humanoids in the Arena: Where Robotics Becomes Sport”.
Speaker: Xenia Butalov, Founder and CEO at Ultimate Bots.
11:30 AM: Presentation
”From Foundation Models to Functional Humanoids: Bridging the Cognitive Gap in Robotics”.
Speaker: Michael DeGrace, Global Key Account Manager, Physical AI at Teradyne Robotics.
11:45 AM: Presentation
“The Self-Learning Brain for Mission-Critical Humanoids”.
Speaker: Amarjot Singh, Founder & CEO at Skylark Labs.
Day 2 - afternoon
December 2
12:00 PM: Lunch Break
1:00 PM: Presentation
”Retiring the Last Remote Operator: Predicting Robot Failures Before They Happen”.
Speaker: Yotam Azriel, Founder & CEO at Tensorleap.
1:15 PM: Presentation
“The Self-Learning Brain for Mission-Critical Humanoids”.
Speaker: Kathryn Zealand, Founder & CEO at Skip Innovations.
1:30 PM: Presentation
”Optimize Humanoid Hardware Through Connectivity: Smaller. Lighter. Stronger”.
Speaker: Ed Garstkiewicz, Sr. Business Development Manager, Emerging Technology, HARTING.
1:45 PM: Presentation
”Service as Strategy.”
Speaker: Jeff Pittelkow, Founder at ROBOWORX.
2:00 PM: Presentation
”What Will Power the Humanoids of 2030: Why the Battery Technology Winning Today Isn’t the One Everyone’s Betting On.”
Speaker: Wojciech Irla, Humanoid Robots Product Director at Impact Clean Power Technology.
2:15 PM: Presentation
“Motor Winding Technologies for Humanoid Actuators: From Hip to Hand”.
Speaker: Kumar Rajasekhara, CEO & President at Marsilli North America.
2:30 PM: Presentation
“Inside the Humanoid Joint: How Gearing Choices Shape Actuator Performance”.
Speaker: Tim Pirie, Chief Technology Officer, CGI at The Timken Company.
2:45 PM: Presentation
“The Data Collector's Perspective”.
Speaker: Gio Gujarati, Head of Strategy and Growth at Awign.
3:00 PM: Afternoon Break
The schedule, speakers, and topics are subject to change. Please check back for updates.