Sebastian Thrun (세바스찬 스런), seen as an early key figure in Google’s self-driving car project and Waymo, is working on a new robotics startup, Dulo.

Business Insider reported on Aug. 18 that Thrun mentioned the new company himself at the end of a keynote speech at the Actuate robotics conference in San Francisco.

Thrun told the audience it was not yet time to describe the company in detail. "I'm not talking about the company right now," he said. "It's in stealth mode and very small, but it's in robotics." He disclosed the fact of its founding but did not give details such as its business, organization size or whether it has raised investment.

Not much information has been made public so far. According to a brief introduction page hosted by Stanford, Dulo is developing foundation models for hardware design. The goal is "manufacturing at close to the speed of light." The page says leaders from Waymo, Google Brain and the Stanford AI Lab are included on the team. Thrun previously led the Stanford AI Lab.

The startup is likely to draw industry attention given Thrun's track record. He attracted Google’s attention in 2005 after leading a Stanford team to win an autonomous driving race by completing a 132-mile desert course without human intervention. He later led Google’s self-driving car project after being recruited by Larry Page, and the business later developed into Waymo.

Beyond autonomous driving, Thrun was a co-founder of Google Brain and Google X, and also helped found online education company Udacity. He later led flying car startup Kitty Hawk, which has since shut down. This background adds weight to the possibility that Dulo may seek an approach that combines artificial intelligence and manufacturing rather than being a simple robotics hardware company. The scope disclosed by the company, however, is limited to developing foundation models for hardware design and improving manufacturing speed.

Against that backdrop, the key question for Dulo is where its actual products, customers and areas of application will lead. Thrun said it is a "very small" organization, but the introduction page already highlights personnel from Waymo, Google Brain and the Stanford AI Lab. As generative AI and foundation models in the robotics industry continue expanding beyond software into hardware design and manufacturing processes, attention is focused on what form Dulo will take.