Industrial Next brings AI robots that retool factory lines in minutes

A new approach to factory automation

Industrial Next, a San Francisco-based startup, presented at the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 with AI-driven, self-contained robotic stations powered by proprietary foundation models that connect vision, task context and motion. The company says this allows a production line to be retooled in minutes rather than weeks without traditional programming.

In most factories today, robots and machines are programmed for one specific task and product. Changing a line means reprogramming and physical retooling, or swapping out equipment, which can take weeks or months. Industrial Next says its goal is to let manufacturers automate complex and delicate tasks that traditionally require human labor.

Built by Tesla veterans

Industrial Next was founded in 2021 by Lukas Pankau and Allen Pan, both of whom previously worked at Tesla. Pankau served as a lead electrical architect at Tesla before moving on to Waymo. Pan led Tesla's autonomous factory efforts and later became a chief architect at autonomous driving company Neolix. The pair came up with the idea for the company while working together at Tesla, where they grew frustrated that cutting-edge vehicle and self-driving technology was held back by decades-old factory equipment.

The founders say traditional industrial robots are typically programmed to perform highly specific, repeatable tasks, so even a small change in the process or product can cause failures or costly downtime. Robotics also lacks the vast datasets that internet-trained AI models draw on. Industrial Next says its solution is an extremely high-fidelity simulation engine that closely mimics real-world dynamics, letting robots learn high-precision, high-dexterity tasks in a virtual world built to approximate real physics.

Deployments and the BMW partnership

On stage, the company announced a partnership with BMW Group Technology Office to evaluate Industrial Next's AI-powered dexterous manipulation for manufacturing.

Some of the startup's workstations are already used in making one of the world's most popular smartphones, handling delicate jobs that manufacturers had tried and failed to automate for years, such as threading a flex cable and snapping a tiny connector cap into place. Pankau also described a film peeling station where the robots strip protective film off camera modules and buttons at or above human speed with full accuracy, even when moved to a new phone model and production line they have never seen.

The founders say their ultimate goal is to move beyond phones toward more complicated tasks, including building a full car end to end without any human ever touching the line.

Sources: Techcrunch Ai