Host: Welcome to FinTech TV. While artificial intelligence software has dominated Wall Street headlines, the convergence of AI and robotics is moving rapidly from experimental labs to real world enterprise deployments. And as corporations face elevated labor costs and tightening workforce availability, the demand for embodied AI and automated workforces is surging across logistics, healthcare, and hospitality following its recent public listing on NASDAQ. MBAI. What company is focusing on the critical intelligence layer needed to coordinate multi-robot fleets at scale? Joining us live to discuss the future of embodied AI and enterprise automation is John Fowler, CEO of MBody AI. John, great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me.
John Fowler: Thanks for having me.
Host: Well, first and foremost, now that you have listed, tell us what your mission is and what your company actually does.
John Fowler: So for us, we're focused on the service industry robotics. So we're looking at hospitals, healthcare, and, uh, gaming and hospitality. We're helping these customers adopt the great technology that manufacturers make and actually make it look for them, work for them. So when someone like Elon talks about billions of robots, it's one thing to make them, it's a whole another thing to make them work for businesses, and that's what we do.
Host: So tell us about the real world, uh, opportunities out there for enterprises.
John Fowler: So we're currently deployed in some of the biggest casinos and resorts throughout the United States, helping them do repetitive, laborious tasks that they're having trouble hiring for. So really, if you want to understand where our business is going, you look at where the big payroll is, where there's a lot of labor being expended, and where companies are having trouble hiring, and that's where our opportunity is to automate using robotics and AIs and expand on what's happening when it comes to your with your business model, especially since you've gone public.
Host: So for us, going public is a means to an end.
John Fowler: It allows us to raise the capital to acquire more robots and deploy them for our clients. The demand is there. I mean, what we're able to do for our clients is truly extraordinary, and now we have the capital and the credibility to execute.
Host: And I do want to ask you about the orchestration layer versus the hardware here. So tell us what's happening below the surface.
John Fowler: Absolutely. So we don't make any of the robots ourselves. We work with a couple of large Fortune 500 companies, lots of enterprise, uh, resort and gaming operators, and we provide them the software that allows the robots to work together the same way for humans, a manager. All the employees to work together to get the job done. That was a real gap in the market, and, and we're owning that gap, and we're a market leader in that orchestration software for enterprise robotics.
Host: Yeah, so when we were talking about this segment and how you were able to find this gap in the market, tell us about the logistics involved here and the reality when it comes to the numbers.
John Fowler: Yeah, so, again, you gotta look at the payroll. We have clients that spend billions of dollars a year on US domestic payroll. They're evaluating that cost across the AI spectrum, and robotics is a huge piece. So when you're looking at cleaning jobs, delivery jobs, logistic jobs throughout huge portions of the US labor force, these are all where we see our opportunities. So, our goal is to expand in the verticals where we are. Uh, and then look at additional verticals as we grow, but with the same concept of if you're spending money today on people, they're doing repetitive jobs, it's hard to hire, so it's probably a robot that can help you out.
Host: Yeah, and there has been this conversation about the role of robotics and how it will affect productivity as well as the labor market here in the US. So what does the timeline look like for your company?
John Fowler: When we look at the next few years, for us, it's all about growth, adding new clients, adding new industries. And growing with the clients that we have. But one thing to understand is our clients tell us every day, when they're bringing in robots in large part, it's jobs that they're really having trouble hiring or having trouble hiring at the prices they can afford, right? Labor is going up, but it's also getting harder to get. So for the short and medium term, I think we're really helping solve hiring problems for clients rather than looking at displacing large groups of, of employees. I think that's a bit of the, the doomsday or, or sort of fear mongering that goes on in the space.
Host: Yeah, and I also want to uh get your perspective when it comes to escaping pilot purgatory in order to scale here. So tell us about the reality of actually scaling here and what needs to take place.
John Fowler: When you're dealing with Fortune 500 and Enterprise clients, you're really, they're putting a lot of trust in us to come into their businesses and manage their guests or their patients or, or, you know, how they do their work. So we start with a 30-day trial. We bring them the robots and the technology. We let them get their real. Data before they decide to make a purchase decision and so far we're batting 1000 on what we've done this year in terms of once we get that deployment they see the benefit of working with us. We've never had anybody say no so far.
Host: And I do want to get your expectations on the convergence of AI and robotics. So in reality, how do you expect the automation convergence to actually reshape the enterprise landscape, not just in the next few years, but also looking beyond?
John Fowler: I think one of the most exciting things about AI right now and robotics is nobody knows exactly what the future is gonna look like. One thing I am confident about today is today is the absolute worst day about the technology, and it's gonna get better tomorrow, the day after that, and the day after that. So for us, we're really, really focused on is building the trust with our enterprise clients, deploying the robots and letting them do the work, and then making sure that as those, um, robotic workforces grow in size and complexity, our orchestration layer makes it work for clients. And that means as the technology. Continues to advance and there's more opportunity, we can continue to scale with existing and new clients and continue to make it very easy for them to adopt and trust robotics in their businesses.
Host: And finally, John, before I let you go, what would you like viewers out there to know about Embody AI?
John Fowler: I think the most important thing to take away from us is we're a different way of looking at the robotics industry. We don't make the robots. We don't have the same capital requirements of the manufacturers. We're really focused on making those robots work for large US businesses. In a way that we get paid regardless of who the winners are, whether they have wheels or feet, you know, humanoid or not, whether they're from manufacturer A or B, to us that's irrelevant as long as our customers get great product, they get the results they want, uh, we're very happy with how our P&L is looking and how it's gonna look in the future.
Host: Well, John, it was a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for joining us today and thank you so much for sharing your perspective as well as all of your insights.
John Fowler: Thanks for having me. Thank you.
