a16z · Nov 2, 2026 · 45m · 40m saved
With Josh Gruenstein, Co-Founder and CEO of Tutor Intelligence
Tutor Intelligence's robots have shipped more than a quarter of a billion products to American consumers, and Josh Gruenstein says almost every customer buying one has never purchased a robot before. Josh told a16z's Martin Casado and Raghu Raghuram that Tutor's edge comes from deploying robots into real workplaces first, rather than perfecting a model before anything ships.
"There are 8 billion people on Earth who all have this baseline physical intelligence that we want our robots to have." — Josh Gruenstein
Josh has spent roughly five and a half years building that thesis into a company now 160 people strong, mostly based in Boston.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 45 minutes of audio, 5 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Tutor's robots have shipped over a quarter of a billion products to American consumers
Almost the entire market is greenfield: most customers have never bought a robot before
Human "tutors" direct robots through tasks, and that work becomes the training data that replaces them
Even a 1% cost edge can flip an entire market to the cheaper, factory-built alternative
Tutor built a 100-robot fleet in Boston, the largest data-collection operation of its kind in the US
The current moment is a "great equalizer" between the US and China on industrial robotics
1. The Job, Not the Model
Josh started Tutor about five and a half years ago on a contrarian premise: deploying robots directly into real workplaces generates the labeled, real-world data needed to train capable robot AI, rather than perfecting a model first and deploying it later.
Almost all of Tutor's market is greenfield, with most buyers new to robots entirely, Josh says
"Almost everybody we're selling a robot to has never purchased a robot before. Almost all of the market is greenfield." — Josh Gruenstein
The company is roughly 160 people, based primarily in Boston, and its robots work across small businesses up through Fortune 50 and 100 companies.
Tutor's robots have shipped over a quarter of a billion products to American consumers, Josh says
"Tutor robots have manufactured and shipped over a quarter of a billion products to American consumers." — Josh Gruenstein
