Latest / Best of Business / Harry Mellsop: Kiwi entrepreneur on his new AI-based startup Antioch

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Harry Mellsop: Kiwi entrepreneur on his new AI-based startup Antioch · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk zed B.
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  Speaker 2: Right this week, expat Kiwi entrepreneur Harry Melsop has raised
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  Speaker 2: four point three million US dollars for his AI startup, Antioch.
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  Speaker 2: The former Tesla engineer and Stanford University graduate, is part
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  Speaker 2: of a team bringing AI into the physical world. So
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  Speaker 2: Antioch has built a software program that lets companies building
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  Speaker 2: robots test them in real world scenarios. So Harry has
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  Speaker 2: just right back in New Zealand. He joins us to
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  Speaker 2: talk through what he is hoping to achieve. Harry, good morning,
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  Speaker 2: Good morning, How are you good? Thank you hey, talk
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  Speaker 2: me through what you've created here in Layman's terms.
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  Speaker 3: Sure thing, Yeah, So, I mean, you know, at Antioch,
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  Speaker 3: our mission ultimately is to help companies who are building
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  Speaker 3: autonomous systems, whether that's a self driving car or a
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  Speaker 3: robot in a factory or a drone, to sort of
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  Speaker 3: shift all of their validation flows from hardware into pure software.
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  Speaker 3: And so you know, as you can imagine, if you're
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  Speaker 3: building a self driving car, super important to test that
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  Speaker 3: system thoroughly. And so what that means is, you know,
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  Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands or millions of kilometers driven on real roads,
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  Speaker 3: super expensive, you know, the car's breakdown. And so we're
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  Speaker 3: really helping all of those companies move their workflows into
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  Speaker 3: what's basically you can think of it as a really
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  Speaker 3: high fidelity video game engine that really closely models the
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  Speaker 3: real world.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so what other kind of industries would be using
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  Speaker 2: this technology?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we work with Yeah, so you know, beyond
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  Speaker 3: the autonomous driving space, beyond the drone space, we're seeing
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  Speaker 3: a lot of interest from manufacturing, from logistics. I think
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  Speaker 3: something that's also personally surprised me is a lot of
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  Speaker 3: interest from smart security companies, so you know, smart home sensors,
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  Speaker 3: smart those sorts of applications as well, because you know,
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  Speaker 3: you can imagine for them at testing that that those
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  Speaker 3: devices are properly detecting as they should be is a
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  Speaker 3: high priority too. So there's really quite a wide gamut
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  Speaker 3: of applications there.
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  Speaker 2: I'm assuming that there's a gap in the AI market here,
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  Speaker 2: is anyone else doing this?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So what we typically see is that companies who
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  Speaker 3: are trying to make this move into software simulation him
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  Speaker 3: to try and build that capability internally, and so you know,
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  Speaker 3: for example, when when I finished my master's degree, my
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  Speaker 3: first job out of that was at Tesla's autopilot team.
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  Speaker 3: We had a fantastic simulation team there internally, but that
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  Speaker 3: costs tends to hundreds of millions of dollars to kind
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  Speaker 3: of build out within the company, and you know, we
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  Speaker 3: don't think that that's the way it should be, right.
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  Speaker 3: We want to make sure that we're kind of equalizing
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  Speaker 3: the playing field so that newer and smaller startup can
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  Speaker 3: also kind of participate here.
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  Speaker 2: So that's yeah, so quite different industries using this technology,
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  Speaker 2: do you need to then design it? Are you constantly
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  Speaker 2: designing for different specific companies and industries.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's a great question. And so I think
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  Speaker 3: there's kind of two parts to how we structure the business.
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  Speaker 3: So the first is that we build the simulation technology
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  Speaker 3: in a very bottoms up fashion, so we add support
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  Speaker 3: for you know, maybe it's motives, or maybe it's cameras
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  Speaker 3: or radars or so on and so forth, and then
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  Speaker 3: that kind of allows us to you know, service a
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  Speaker 3: more diverse stet of customers ultimately, because you can start
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  Speaker 3: to think of all of these different categories, whether it's
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  Speaker 3: a drone, or an autonomous vehicle as a sort of
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  Speaker 3: you know, bringing together of those different foundational technology.
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  Speaker 2: So you've kind of got it sitting there and it
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  Speaker 2: depends on what the client's going to need. You kind
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  Speaker 2: of take that and take that and take that and
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  Speaker 2: put it all together.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
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  Speaker 2: Sure, it's not quite out works at all.
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  Speaker 3: Eric, No, No, that's actually that's pretty accurate.
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  Speaker 2: How big do you think the physical AI industry is
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  Speaker 2: going to be?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question, and it's something that we
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  Speaker 3: have spent a lot of time thinking about before we
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  Speaker 3: started this company. I believe that it's going to be
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  Speaker 3: the largest industry in the world over the next ten
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  Speaker 3: to fifteen years. I think that we you know, we've
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  Speaker 3: seen with the rise of large language models and companies
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  Speaker 3: like open ai, that the world of desk work has
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  Speaker 3: fundamentally changed forever. And I think we're going to see
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  Speaker 3: those same trends playing out in the physical world as well.
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  Speaker 3: And ultimately those industries are really what matters, right, you know,
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  Speaker 3: we need to we need to eat food, you know,
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  Speaker 3: we consume things in the physical world, and so the
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  Speaker 3: scope for impact there is enormous.
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  Speaker 2: So, Harry, what is this funding going to do for you.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're using it to expand the team out.
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  Speaker 3: We've been building the team primarily in New York City
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  Speaker 3: and so you know, bringing in new engineering staff that
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  Speaker 3: allows us to take on new customers. Currently, we are
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  Speaker 3: an unfortunate position where we're pretty saturated in terms of,
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  Speaker 3: you know, the number of customers that we can kind
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  Speaker 3: of help, so we we pretty urgently need to expand
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  Speaker 3: a little bit there. And then also, you know, the
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  Speaker 3: other surprising piece for us has been the need to
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  Speaker 3: kind of produce content in these simulations. So you know,
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  Speaker 3: if some of our customers have the need for particular
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  Speaker 3: warehouses to be modeled or you know, home environments or whatever,
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  Speaker 3: that looks like we actually need quite a large treaty
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  Speaker 3: artistry capability as well, so bringing some of those folks
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  Speaker 3: into the team.
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  Speaker 2: This isn't your first company. You also founded a company
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  Speaker 2: called Trendspose, which you sold after setting up is anti
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  Speaker 2: arc project that you're really keen to kind of get
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  Speaker 2: up and running and see where it will go and
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  Speaker 2: stick around whether or are you sort of planning on
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  Speaker 2: getting it up and running and selling that as well.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question. Now, I think for us,
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  Speaker 3: we kind of see the opportunity here as being enormous.
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  Speaker 3: You know, I think we're all very aligned on this
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  Speaker 3: idea that this physical AI industry is going to be
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  Speaker 3: world defining over the next ten to fifteen years, and
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  Speaker 3: we think that we're building a product which is, you know,
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  Speaker 3: really very necessary. Everyone who's participating in that space is
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  Speaker 3: going to need a solution like Antioch. So for us,
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  Speaker 3: this is a business that we're going to want to
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  Speaker 3: hold on to and we hope to grow.
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  Speaker 2: Harry, You're most welcome not to answer this question, but
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  Speaker 2: can I ask how old you are?
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  Speaker 3: I'm twenty seven, cry.
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  Speaker 2: Key, Okay, this is your second business, yes, yes, yes, okay.
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  Speaker 2: Oh look Harry, really impressive stuff. Really keen to keep
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  Speaker 2: it on it how it goes. Thank you so much
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  Speaker 2: for your time, Have a lovely Christmas and enjoy your
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  Speaker 2: time back in New Zealand.
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