The climate in Las Vegas wasn’t trying good. The plan had been that every worker of YC-backed Bucket Robotics would carry elements of their sales space of their baggage to the 2026 Shopper Electronics Present. However CEO and founder Matt Puchalski didn’t wish to take the likelihood that one (or all) of their flights can be delayed. So he rented a Hyundai Santa Fe and packed it up.
“It was… it was tight,” he stated with amusing on the present ground.
It took 12 hours driving within the rain, however the gear – and Puchalski – made it safely to Las Vegas, and so started the younger firm’s first-ever CES.
San Francisco-based Bucket Robotics was simply one among hundreds of firms exhibiting on the annual tech convention, a speck of sand on a seashore filled with merchandise and guarantees. However regardless of its modest setup within the automotive-focused West Corridor, Puchalski stated the journey was value it.
A part of that was a willingness to be tireless, observant, and all the time able to pitch.
An engineer by commerce, Puchalski spent many of the final decade engaged on autonomous automobiles at Uber, Argo AI, Ford’s subsidiary Latitude AI, and SoftBank-backed Stack AV.
At these jobs, Puchalski developed deep connections within the automotive {industry}, and we crossed paths all week.
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October 13-15, 2026
There he was at an {industry} networking celebration one night time. On one other night time, in my resort foyer at 10 p.m., he was debating tips on how to steadiness high quality and manufacturing yield with Sanjay Dastoor — founding father of mobility startups Skip and Boosted, each of which additionally bought off the bottom at YC.
However I first bumped into Puchalski throughout breakfast on the resort. Seated on the desk subsequent to me, he and gross sales affiliate Max Joseph had been working by way of preparations for the convention’s “Media Day” over (allegedly) cage-free eggs.
Puchalski’s verve piqued my curiosity, and after making an intro, he advised me what Bucket Robotics is as much as. Earlier than I knew it, he had cracked open a vibrant yellow Pelican case and I used to be holding a small piece of plastic.
Began as a part of YC’s Spring 2024 batch, Bucket Robotics is all about utilizing superior imaginative and prescient methods to do high quality inspections, particularly for surfaces. The objective is to automate a menial activity that Puchalski joked is often accomplished by “dudes in Wisconsin,” and to speed up the broad, multi-industry effort to onshore manufacturing.
One instance Puchalski provided was automotive door handles. It’s an element prospects contact day-after-day, so it must be structurally sound, and that sort of high quality inspection is mainly solved.
However it may be difficult to verify the floor is flawless. Is the colour proper? Are there any burn or scuff marks? These are the questions Bucket Robotics desires to reply.
“It’s deeply exhausting to automate a majority of these challenges with out large volumes of information, so auto producers simply throw dudes in Wisconsin at this downside,” he stated.
Bucket Robotics solves that knowledge downside by working from the CAD recordsdata for a specific half. It then generates a bunch of simulated defects – burn marks, bumps, breaks – in order that its imaginative and prescient software program can detect these issues shortly on a manufacturing line.
There’s no want for handbook labeling, and the corporate claims its fashions can deploy “in minutes” whereas additionally adapting if merchandise or manufacturing traces change. One of many large promoting factors so far is that Bucket Robotics can combine into present manufacturing traces with out including new {hardware}, Puchalski stated.
This has already attracted prospects in automotive and in protection, organising Bucket Robotics to pursue the more and more in style path of changing into a “dual-use” firm.
When the present ground opened, the primary two hours had been “intense,” Puchalski stated. Attendees in fits snooped across the startup’s tables, plucked orange stickers with the Bucket Robotics brand, and quizzed the staff about their tech.
Extra importantly, Puchalski stated the extent of curiosity stayed constant all through the week. He had “actual technical discussions” with folks from the worlds of producing, robotics, and automation. He stated Friday that he’s spent the week since the present on follow-up calls with potential prospects and buyers.
CES generally is a slog, however Bucket Robotics survived. Now comes the precise exhausting half: constructing a enterprise, scaling, fundraising, and hanging industrial offers.
As for the “dudes in Wisconsin,” Puchalski doesn’t see his firm as a risk to their livelihoods. These jobs are simply as a lot about recognizing defects as they’re about figuring out the foundation reason for the issue, he stated.
And apart from, Puchalski added, automating floor high quality inspection is one thing that the manufacturing {industry} has been attempting to do for many years.
“So after we go to our prospects, it’s extremely thrilling,” he stated.