Fireside Chat with Ted Xiao: Building the Frontier of Physical AI at Prometheus

​Physical AI and robotics-driven manufacturing is one of the most transformative and least understood frontiers in AI today, yet few researchers are making the leap from frontier labs or traditional robotics into this space.

​Join Rora for a conversation with Ted Xiao, Founding Member of Technical Staff at Project Prometheus, where he's building AGI for the physical economy. Ted was previously a Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, serving as Technical Lead on the Robotics and Gemini multimodal teams, focused on scaling frontier models for real-world understanding using internet-scale foundation models and experience-driven learning. Before DeepMind, he founded Machine Learning at Berkeley and earned his B.S. and M.S. in EECS from UC Berkeley, advised by Professor Claire Tomlin.

​Now on the founding team at Prometheus,recently out of stealth and fresh off a closed Series B, Ted is helping build the team leading this next frontier. He'll share:

• ​His journey from Research Scientist at GDM to founding MTS at Prometheus

• ​Why physical AI for manufacturing is the next major inflection point, and why so few top researchers have caught on

• ​Prometheus's bimodal hiring strategy: frontier lab veterans alongside early-career, non-traditional talent

• ​What makes early-career candidates stand out, from non-CS engineering backgrounds (mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil) to hands-on builders with grit and curiosity

• ​Real signals of exceptional talent, like differentiated projects and open-source re-implementations

​Whether you're a researcher considering the jump into physical AI or an early-career engineer wondering if this space is for you, this session offers a candid look at what Prometheus is looking for, and why now is the moment to get in.