Former Tesla humanoid head launches a robotics startup

Robotics startup Mytra has been quietly operating behind the scenes since its May 2022 founding in a bid to rethink warehouse automation. The outfit brings a solid pedigree to the table, founded by automotive vets from EV firms, including Tesla and Rivian.

Warehouse/fulfillment has been a white-hot category for automation since the pandemic hamstrung the global supply chain in ways that are still being felt. It’s a highly competitive space as well, with big names like Amazon, Locus and Zebra/Fetch making headway and setting the stage for an explosion of interest in the bipedal humanoid form factor.

Even as the world has come back to life post-pandemic, labor shortages remain a major sticking point for the industry, as with so many others. There’s still plenty of room for players to make an impact, however. Estimates suggest that between 5% and 10% of global warehouses are automated in any meaningful sense.

Like so many others, Mytra co-founder and CEO Chris Walti discovered automation’s shortcomings the hard way. He was previously at Tesla, where the hard way tends to be par for the course. Walti spent seven years at the carmaker, first in engineering, then mobile robotics and ultimately as the senior manager/lead for what would become Optimus.

He describes his journey through Tesla as an ongoing cycle of looking for solutions, determining that nothing in market was suitable for its specifics needs, and then going and building the things themselves. That started with autonomous mobile robot (AMR) solutions.

“I was pulled into manufacturing and automation through the Model 3 ramp,” Walti told TechCrunch. “Tesla was struggling to get our automation systems up and running, so we ended up setting up a manual warehouse as a pressure release valve for the manufacturing system. About six months later, they were like, ‘Can you just take over the automation system that’s causing a lot of these challenges?’”

Among the industry shortcomings that emerged for Tesla’s specific needs was an inability to find AMRs that could move around payloads as heavy as 3,000 pounds. Those are the sorts of demands one bumps up against when making cars. So the team went to work building their own solutions in-house.

“And then Elon [Musk] was like, ‘We should build a humanoid,” Walti said. “My team was tapped to lead that. I led the internal hiring effort for that team. Everything you saw on AI Day was a product of those efforts.” He added that “at some point, [Optimus] became the number one effort in the company. It ended up not really being a fit for what I ended up wanting to do.”

Walti remains bullish about the long-term impact of humanoid robots across a variety of sectors, but he noted that he “think[s] it’s going to be a while before humanoids are truly moving the needle on a production floor.”

Mytra’s solution shares a lot of common DNA with vertical robotic storage solutions produced by companies like AutoStore. Two of the primary differentiators between the startup and existing solutions, according to Walti, are its ability manage heavy payloads and its dynamism.

“There are literally trillions of different ways that I can move one of these pallets or bookshelves from point A to point B within the system,” he explained. “Which is fundamentally unique. This is the most kinematically free system that has been conceived.”

In spite of maintaining stealth until now, Mytra has already drummed up interest with big names. The startup has a pilot with grocery giant Albertsons, along with “another half-dozen Fortune 50 customers that are in varying stages in the pipeline.”

Mytra also recently closed a $50 million Series B, bringing its total funding up to $78 million. Investors include Greenoaks and Eclipse.