, a Pittsburgh-based startup he'd launched right out of college with wall-climbing robots that scanned infrastructure like power plants and nuclear missile silos for structural issues. So when a customer offered him $500,000 to buy the company, seemingly out of nowhere, the"transformative" offer stopped him dead in his tracks, he says."It was earth-shattering money for me," says Loosararian.
"I just fundamentally could not agree with that, as it relates to how you build robotics. You've got to build it close to the customers out in the field," says Loosararian, who's seen robotics startups"die, time and time again" by assembling and testing solely in labs.