Cyrus

Today, we’re launching SafeWorld. I’m building it with Ding Zhao (@zhao__ding) and Kyle Wong (@kwong47). Ding has spent nearly two decades working on the safety of autonomous systems. He leads the Safe AI Lab at Carnegie Mellon, and is an NSF CAREER Award recipient in this space. Few people have thought as deeply about how to make increasingly intelligent machines operate safely in the physical world. Our mission: 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀. We’ve raised $𝟭𝟮.𝟮𝗠 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴, co-led by Shine Capital and a16z Speedrun. Some robot safety tests are too dangerous to run around people. A person steps out from behind a shelf. A cart blocks a sensor. Someone changes direction near a moving robot. More capable robots need more capable ways to test what happens next. SafeWorld builds 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲. Teams turn incidents, safety standards, and robot logs into scenarios. They test thousands of variations with realistic, reactive human motion, alongside physical testing. We’re already working with robotics companies and global enterprises. Kyle and I have worked together for seven years, starting when I joined Pixlee as its founding engineer and first hire. I built its backend, frontend, computer vision and clothing recommendation systems, and hired engineering teams. My background is in machine learning, anomaly detection, and large-scale data systems. At Salesforce Einstein, I helped build pipelines and deploy models across systems processing over 10 billion events daily. Together, we’re bringing research, engineering, and company-building experience to robot safety. Thank you to our team, customers, and everyone backing us. Special thanks to: @aehartz123, @Tocelot, @emilybenn12, @nkatragadda, @grosen, and Eric Chen. @degenfranco, @mikesholiu, @AndreaShuyuWang, Sebastian Zhou, @SRFtweets, and Dulcie fforde. @ernestinefu, @marcmenase, @AnguelovDrago, @stanleytang, John Lin, and @far33d. Thank you @TimFernholz for telling our story: techcrunch.com/2026/10/05/ca… Watch our founder video below. Building or deploying robots around people? Explore SafeWorld and request a demo: safeworld.ai