{"id":245173,"date":"2026-01-18T18:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T18:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/245173\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T18:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T18:51:07","slug":"how-yc-backed-bucket-robotics-survived-its-first-ces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/245173\/","title":{"rendered":"How YC-backed Bucket Robotics survived its first CES"},"content":{"rendered":"

The weather in Las Vegas wasn\u2019t looking good. The plan\u00a0had been\u00a0that\u00a0each employee of YC-backed\u00a0Bucket Robotics<\/a>\u00a0would\u00a0carry parts of their booth\u00a0in their luggage\u00a0to\u00a0the 2026\u00a0Consumer Electronics Show. But CEO and founder Matt Puchalski\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0want to take\u00a0the\u00a0chance\u00a0that\u00a0one\u00a0(or all)\u00a0of\u00a0their flights would be delayed.\u00a0So\u00a0he\u00a0rented a Hyundai Santa Fe\u00a0and packed it up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was\u2026 it was tight,\u201d he said with a laugh\u00a0on the\u00a0show\u00a0floor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It took 12 hours driving in the rain, but the gear \u2013\u00a0and Puchalski\u00a0\u2013 made it\u00a0safely\u00a0to Las Vegas, and so began the young company\u2019s first-ever\u00a0CES.<\/p>\n

San Francisco-based Bucket Robotics\u00a0was\u00a0just\u00a0one of thousands of companies exhibiting at the annual tech conference, a speck of sand on a beach full of products and promises. But despite its\u00a0modest setup in the automotive-focused West Hall, Puchalski said the trip\u00a0was\u00a0worth it.<\/p>\n

Part of that was a willingness to be\u00a0tireless,\u00a0observant, and always ready to pitch.<\/p>\n

An engineer by\u00a0trade,\u00a0Puchalski spent most of the last decade working on autonomous vehicles at Uber,\u00a0Argo AI, Ford\u2019s\u00a0subsidiary\u00a0Latitude AI, and SoftBank-backed Stack AV.<\/p>\n

At those jobs,\u00a0Puchalski developed\u00a0deep\u00a0connections in the automotive industry, and we crossed paths all week.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

There he was at an industry networking party one night. On another night,\u00a0in my hotel lobby at 10 p.m., he was debating how to\u00a0balance quality and manufacturing yield with Sanjay Dastoor\u00a0\u2014\u00a0founder of mobility startups Skip and Boosted,\u00a0both of which also got off the ground at YC.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0I first ran into Puchalski\u00a0during\u00a0breakfast\u00a0at the hotel.\u00a0Seated at the table next to me,\u00a0he and\u00a0sales associate Max Joseph were running through preparations for the conference\u2019s \u201cMedia\u00a0Day\u201d over (allegedly) cage-free eggs.<\/p>\n

Puchalski\u2019s verve piqued my interest, and after making an intro, he told me\u00a0what Bucket Robotics is up to. Before I knew it, he had cracked open a bright yellow Pelican case and I was holding a small piece of plastic.<\/p>\n

Started as part of YC\u2019s Spring 2024 batch, Bucket Robotics is all about using advanced vision systems to do quality inspections, specifically for surfaces. The goal is to automate a menial task that Puchalski joked is usually done by \u201cdudes in Wisconsin,\u201d and to accelerate the broad, multi-industry effort to onshore manufacturing. <\/p>\n

One example Puchalski offered was car door handles. It\u2019s a part customers touch every day, so it needs to be structurally sound, and that kind of quality inspection is basically solved.<\/p>\n

But it can be challenging to make sure the surface is flawless. Is the color right? Are there any burn or scuff marks? These are the questions Bucket Robotics wants to answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s deeply hard to automate these types of challenges without\u00a0huge volumes of data, so auto manufacturers just throw dudes in Wisconsin at this problem,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bucket Robotics\u00a0solves that data\u00a0problem\u00a0by\u00a0working\u00a0from the CAD files\u00a0for\u00a0a particular part. It then generates\u00a0a bunch of simulated defects\u00a0\u2013 burn marks, bumps, breaks \u2013 so that its vision\u00a0software\u00a0can detect those problems quickly on a production line.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no need for manual labeling, and the company claims its models can deploy \u201cin minutes\u201d while also adapting if products or production lines change.\u00a0One of the big selling points to date is that Bucket Robotics can integrate into existing production lines without adding new hardware, Puchalski said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This has already attracted customers in automotive and in defense, setting up Bucket Robotics to pursue the increasingly popular path of becoming a \u201cdual-use\u201d company.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the show floor opened,\u00a0the first two\u00a0hours\u00a0were \u201cintense,\u201d Puchalski said.\u00a0Attendees in suits snooped around the\u00a0startup\u2019s\u00a0tables,\u00a0plucked orange stickers with the Bucket Robotics logo, and quizzed\u00a0the employees about their tech.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

More importantly, Puchalski said the level of interest stayed consistent throughout the week. He had \u201creal technical discussions\u201d with people from the worlds of manufacturing, robotics, and automation. He said Friday that\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0spent the week since\u00a0the show\u00a0on follow-up calls with prospective customers and investors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CES can be a slog,\u00a0but Bucket Robotics survived. Now comes the actual hard part: building a business, scaling, fundraising, and striking commercial deals.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for the \u201cdudes in Wisconsin,\u201d\u00a0Puchalski\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0see\u00a0his company\u00a0as\u00a0a threat to their livelihoods. Those jobs are\u00a0just as much\u00a0about spotting\u00a0defects as they are about\u00a0identifying\u00a0the root cause of the problem, he said.<\/p>\n

And besides, Puchalski added, automating surface quality inspection is something that the manufacturing industry has been trying to do for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo\u00a0when we go to our customers, it\u2019s incredibly exciting,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The weather in Las Vegas wasn\u2019t looking good. The plan\u00a0had been\u00a0that\u00a0each employee of YC-backed\u00a0Bucket Robotics\u00a0would\u00a0carry parts of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,131543,108548,85,46,6361,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-245173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-bucket-robotics","12":"tag-ces-2026","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-robotics","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}