Top of Mind with Brad Porter
He built Amazon’s robot army. Then walked away. Why? To build something bigger. Top of Mind is a weekly 2–5 minute audio drop from Brad Porter—former Amazon VP of Robotics, Scale AI CTO, and now founder of Cobot. Each short episode delivers raw, unfiltered insights on leadership, automation, and the chaos of building at the edge of physical AI. From warehouse floors to the frontier of machine intelligence, this is what it sounds like when a Silicon Valley leader thinks out loud.
Episodes
This week, I talk about China robotics and mechanisms for managing blind spots
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, MIT Athena, Netscape, Tellme, Amazon Robotics, Cobot… I cover it all in under 4 minutes.
(Recorded in May, 2025)
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
I share some insights into how we think about solving the headwinds to building a foundation model for physical AI, share a bit about the value of getting into the field and building great partnerships, and just the value of connecting in person in what has become a digital-first world. (Recorded in April, 2025)
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
In this Top of Mind, I talk about humanoids vs cobots, and share a powerful insight on success that I learned from my grandfather.
(Recorded in May, 2025)
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
Today's "Top of Mind" discusses our abundant future. This is a topic Vinod Khosla spoke about that I've also been thinking about a lot. In today's world in developed countries, most of us do not need to worry about raising our own food. Yet in the late 1700's over 76% of society worked in agriculture. AI and robotics are going to eliminate much of the work we do every day.
I also discuss Amazon's...
I share some tips on "How to Land a Great Robotics Internship!" and building your resume to differentiate.
- Simulation experience is in demand. Highlight the tools you've used. NVIDIA Omniverse IsaacSim skills are particularly in demand.
- Low-level debugging skills are extremely valuable. Learn to use the oscilloscope and trace back to the firmware.
- Highlight any experience you have in the workforce. If you've w...
I think a lot about decision velocity, particularly how do we make high quality decisions quickly? One of the traps I see I call "the 50/50 decision". The 50/50 decision is a decision between two nearly identical options. The challenge when two options are nearly identical is that deciding which is better becomes very hard! You can spend a lot of time trying to find a reason why A or B is a better choice.
A good example of...
This week I talk about the imperative that the US be great at building drones and the criticality of robotics to that mission.
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
In this Top of Mind, I talk about the value of self-play in approaching novel problems and robotics foundational models.
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
I share a leadership story that I learned from Jensen Huang during a private forum.
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
I share a bit of a Cobot update and a leadership insight I learned as a freshman at MIT from the late Dr Henry Kendall, Nobel Prize Winner for discovery of the Quark.
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
In this Top of Mind, I talk about China's AI and robotics capability and what it means for the U.S..
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
I share thoughts on upgrading … your shoes, your feet, technology, etc.
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
In this week's top-of-mind, I talk about humanoid robots. Everything from the type of work they might or might not do, what our robotically-rich future might look like, and why I think we're seeing a surge of activity here now.
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
Top of mind for me this week is personal energy management. At Cobot, one of our credos is sustainable energy. The idea is that we need to be a high-output, high-energy, high-intensity work environment. You can’t really do a startup and just coast. That doesn’t work. On the other hand, burning out is a recipe for making a lot of bad decisions. It’s a recipe for being really inefficient with your time. We think a lot about what sust...
In this very first episode of Top of Mind, I talk about Embrace the Odyssey, one of the culture credos we have at Cobot.
Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brad-porter-s-top-of-mind-7346603629086167040/
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