We've said it before, and we'll say it again: the autonomous vehicle space is starting to feel like a repeat of the 2016 hype cycle. Travis Kalanick is back building a robotics company, and the talent wars and capital are heating up the same way they did the first time around. The money's flowing back, and it's the people who lived through that first wave who are building the next one.

Humble Robotics founder and CEO Eyal Cohen is one of them. Cohen was at Otto when Uber came calling, later followed Anthony Levandowski to Pronto, and after two decades bouncing between deep tech bets in the Bay Area, his new company came out of stealth in April with $24 million to build a fully autonomous, cabless electric hauler for freight.

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Cohen joins Kirsten Korosec to talk about AV déjà vu and what he's learned from 15 years of building startups across electrification, solar, and robotics.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

The bet behind Humble's cabless design and why "the simplest possible robotics platform" was the starting point

How vision models are replacing months of hand-built engineering work that used to go into recognizing things like traffic cones and stop signs

Why Cohen thinks culture beats out compensation when it comes to securing talent in robotics these days

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices