Google's Secret Robotics Play That Nobody's Talking About

A team of former Google DeepMind researchers just raised $2B to build America's answer to DeepSeek. In this episode, we sit down with Ioannis Antonoglou (Yannis), co-founder and CTO of Reflection AI, who helped create AlphaGo—the AI that beat the world champion in the game of Go back in 2016. Yannis breaks down what Reflection is building, why they're releasing frontier-level AI models as open-weight, and how mixture-of-experts architecture lets massive models run efficiently. We dig into reinforcement learning, the US vs. China open source gap, sovereign AI, coding agents, and why open science might be the fastest path to the most powerful AI on the planet.Reflection AI: https://www.reflection.aiReflection AI raises $2B at $8B valuation (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/09/reflection-raises-2b-to-be-americas-open-frontier-ai-lab-challenging-deepseek/Previous Neuron coverage of DeepSeek: https://www.theneuron.ai/newsletter/deepseek-returns https://www.theneuron.ai/newsletter/10-wild-deepseek-demosSubscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

This video is a re-upload from our livestream on YouTube. Most people are still using ChatGPT the way they used Google in 2005: type a question, get an answer, close the tab.In 2026, that’s like owning a professional kitchen and only using the microwave.In this episode, Grant and Corey walk through The Neuron’s 5-Level AI Proficiency Stack — a framework for going from “I use ChatGPT sometimes” to “AI saves me 10 hours a week.”No coding required. No hype. Just the actual progression that separates casual users from people getting real, compounding value out of AI every single day.The 5 Levels:🔹 Level 1: Projects — Why your first move isn’t prompting. It’s onboarding.🔹 Level 2: Prompting — The simplest formula that actually works🔹 Level 3: Skills — Turn one good conversation into a reusable superpower🔹 Level 4: Automations — Set it, schedule it, forget it🔹 Level 5: Agents — AI that decides what to do and when to do itTools mentioned:• ChatGPT Projects: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10169521-projects-in-chatgpt• Claude Skills: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512176-what-are-skills• Claude Cowork: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-recurring-tasks-in-cowork• OpenAI Codex: https://developers.openai.com/codex/app/automations• Gemini Opal: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-labs/opal-agent/• Gemini Scheduled Actions: https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16316416📩 Read the full deep dive:https://www.theneuron.ai/explainer-articles/how-to-actually-use-ai-in-2026-the-complete-guide/

Brian Gerkey is the CTO of Intrinsic, the robotics software company that started inside Alphabet and now sits inside Google, working directly with DeepMind and Gemini. Brian co-created ROS (Robot Operating System), the open-source platform used by over 1 million developers that powers everything from factory robots to NASA's Astrobee on the International Space Station. In this episode, Grant talks with Brian about "physical AI" — what happens when AI leaves the screen and starts controlling robots in the real world. They cover why 80% of US manufacturing facilities still have zero automation, how Intrinsic's platform acts as the "Android of robotics," the breakthroughs in AI-powered perception that let robots see with sub-millimeter accuracy using cheap cameras, the challenges of simulating physical contact (friction is a nightmare), and why the best robot application ideas often come from people who know nothing about robots.Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.aiIntrinsic: https://www.intrinsic.ai/ROS (Robot Operating System): https://www.ros.org/AI for Industry Challenge: https://www.intrinsic.ai/events/ai-for-industry-challengeIntrinsic joins Google (Feb 2026): https://www.intrinsic.ai/blog/posts/intrinsic-joins-google-to-accelerate-physical-ai

Most businesses don't buy their AI services directly from OpenAI or Google—they buy it through a massive, invisible distribution network called "the channel." Victoria Durgin and Katie Bavoso of Channel Insider join Corey and Grant to explain how this hidden industry works, why AI is shaking it up unlike anything before, and what it means for businesses trying to adopt AI in 2026.Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.aiChannel Insider: https://channelinsider.com

In this episode of The Neuron Podcast, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey sit down with Dan Shipper, CEO of Every, to talk about agent-native engineering—the framework his team uses to build and ship AI-powered products at a pace most companies can't match.Dan walks us through what happened when his AI document editor Proof went viral (and then went down), why he believes the way we build software is fundamentally changing, and how Every's small team manages to ship and maintain an entire suite of AI tools: Spiral (automatic style guides from your writing), Sparkle (AI writing cleanup with custom folders), Cora (AI research assistant, now on iOS), Monologue (AI-powered journaling with notes), and Proof (the agent-first document editor that broke the internet for a day), as well as their new to be revealed on Friday: Plus One (a hosted AI agent for Slack).Whether you're a founder, developer, or just someone trying to understand what "agentic" actually means in practice—this conversation is the real-world playbook.Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.aiProducts mentioned:• Every: https://every.to• Spiral: https://spiral.computer• Sparkle: https://sparkle.computer• Cora: https://cora.computer• Monologue: https://www.monologue.to/• Proof: https://proofeditor.ai• Plus One (the new one!): https://every.to/plus-one

Nick Heiner leads RL environment development at Surge AI, the bootstrapped company that hit $1.2B in revenue training models for OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google. In this episode, we break down reinforcement learning environments—the secret training grounds where AI agents learn to actually do work. Nick shares why even the best models fail 40% of real workplace tasks, what happened when 200 Wall Street experts graded GPT-5 and Claude, and his prediction that a $1B company with one human employee could exist by 2030.A Special Thank You To Our Sponsor For This Video: Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA. Learn more at https://dell.com/yourwaytoaiResources: • Surge AI Research – Hierarchy of Agentic Capabilities: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.09032 • Surge AI Blog: https://surgehq.ai/blog • Nick's Sonnet 4.5 Review: https://surgehq.ai/blog/sonnet-4-5-product-take • Nick’s Substack: https://nickheiner.substack.com/ • SurgeHQ’s enterprisebench: https://surgehq.ai/blog/enterprisebench-corecraft • Nick’s hilarious Gemini 3.1 review: https://nickheiner.substack.com/p/gemini-31-pro-not-leading-edge-also  • Hemingway-bench AI Writing Leaderboard https://surgehq.ai/blog/hemingway-bench-ai-writing-leaderboard • LMArena is a cancer on AI: https://surgehq.ai/blog/lmarena-is-a-plague-on-ai • Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA: https://dell.com/yourwaytoaiSubscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

Proton—the company behind the world's largest encrypted email service with 100M+ users—just launched Lumo, a privacy-first AI assistant. We sit down with Eamonn Maguire, who leads Proton's ML team and built Lumo from the ground up. Eamonn has a PhD from Oxford and a postdoc at CERN, and he breaks down how Lumo's encryption actually works, why Big Tech's business model prevents them from building private AI, the real privacy threats hiding inside viral AI trends like Ghibli-fication, and whether AI agents are safe to connect to your bank account. Listeners will learn how encrypted AI handles your data differently, what open-source models power Lumo, and why "set-and-forget" agents are still more hype than reality.🔗 Links & Resources:Lumo by Proton: https://lumo.proton.me Proton: https://proton.me Lumo 1.3 (Projects): https://proton.me/blog/lumo-1-3 Lumo for Business: https://proton.me/blog/lumo-business Proton Sheets: https://proton.me/blog/sheets-proton-drive CLI for Proton Pass: https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-cli Reserve your child's email: https://proton.me/mail/born-private/email Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai 

Carta CMO Nicole Baer joins Corey and Grant to break down the real state of startups in 2026. With half of all venture funding now flowing to AI-native companies and seed deals at a six-year low, the startup playbook has fundamentally changed. Nicole shares Carta’s data on solo founders, the new billion-dollar timeline, why the Bay Area’s grip is tighter than ever, and how AI is reshaping everything from marketing to fund administration.Carta State of Startups 2025 Report: https://carta.com/blog/state-of-startups-2025/Carta Data & Insights (free): https://carta.com/data/Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

Recorded live at NVIDIA GTC 2026 in San Jose, Corey sits down with returning guest Kari Briski—VP of Generative AI Software for Enterprise at NVIDIA—to unpack their biggest open-source model yet: Nemotron 3 Super. Kari breaks down why a 120B-parameter model runs as fast as a 12B one, how multi-agent systems are going from science fiction to production, and why Jensen Huang is calling this "a new operating system." We also dig into NVIDIA's work on Open Claw security, the 35x explosion in open-model token generation, and where omni-modal AI is heading next.Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.aiRelevant links:NVIDIA Build (try Nemotron): https://build.nvidia.comNemotron on Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/nvidiaOpen Router: https://openrouter.aiKari's previous Neuron episode (Oct 2025): https://youtu.be/p0INn_w7TYo

Scientific discovery has always been slow. Until now.In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Qichao Hu, CEO of SES AI, to reveal how they are using AI agents to turn a 8-year research cycle into a 2-week sprint. By combining autonomous "wet labs" with advanced AI models, they are solving one of the hardest physics problems in tech: the battery bottleneck.We dive deep into how this "Molecular Universe" project isn't just about EV batteries—it's about unlocking power for data centers, robotics, and AR glasses. If you want to see a concrete example of AI agents working in the physical world to solve material science constraints, do not miss this conversation.🔗 Learn more about SES AI: https://www.ses.ai/🔗 Follow the Molecular Universe project: https://molecular-universe.com/aboutSubscribe for more interviews with the people building AI’s next wave.For more practical, grounded conversations on AI systems that actually work, subscribe to The Neuron newsletter at https://theneuron.ai.