Wendy Tan-White Will Lead Alphabet’s Latest Robotics Bet, Intrinsic

Google's parent company, Alphabet, has revealed its latest robotics venture, Intrinsic, as well as its leadership. At the very top, the tech giant has entrusted Wendy Tan-White as CEO of the unit that has been spun out of its X moonshot laboratory, according to Fortune.

The company also revealed that Torsten Kroeger will serve as the newly independant venture's CTO.

Tan-White, who until now had been a VP in X, will now lead the startup as it seeks to disrupt the industrial robotics software market. Intrinsic, which hasn’t debuted its product yet, is working to help companies more easily program their robots by allowing them to issue more intuitive commands, like "turn the screw until it's tight," for example.

"I've always been about democratizing technology," Tan White told Fortune. "If we can open up the accessibility of industrial robotics, we will totally, fundamentally change how the world makes and produces things."

Tan-White is a serial entrepreneur, who brings a wealth of experience founding and leading her own companies, like Moonfruit, a startup she created in the late 1990’s to help build websites without an in-depth knowledge of coding. She also spent time at Zopa.com and Egg.com before switching gears and entering the investing world as Partner at BGF Ventures and a General Partner at Entrepreneur First.

Intrinsic is the latest entrant into the no- and low-code revolution, which has seen a host of startups spring up to help simplify and democratize programming. The movement is in part a response to a lack of talent in the software developer market, which is leaving brands struggling to adapt to increasing digitization. In fact, the shortage of engineers in the US is predicted to exceed 1.2 million by 2026.

Solving this problem can also have knock-on effects and help improve the cost to implement industrial robotics. In a blog post, Tan-White wrote, “By unlocking access to these incredible productivity tools, we hope to support a shift towards a more sustainable and equitable way of making things.

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