Apptronik CEO Jeff Cardenas is stacking the company with humanoid robotics veterans from key companies.

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Apptronik, the Austin-based humanoid robot company that closed a $935 million Series A at a roughly $5.3 billion valuation in February, just stacked its executive ranks with tech company veterans from Waymo, Boston Dynamics, Amazon, iRobot and Paramount+. It also teased a new humanoid robot.

The new hires are:

• Daniel Chu — Chief Product Officer — Waymo (most recently 23andMe)
• Kevin Garell — SVP of Services & Support — Boston Dynamics
• Chirag Shah — VP of Software — Amazon
• Dave Perry — VP of Marketing — Paramount+ (also Amazon)
• Justin Birtz — VP of People Operations — Cellino (also iRobot)

I rarely if ever do stories about executive hires. They’re usually boring inside baseball. But a hiring flurry at this level signifies something that a recent Bessemer report highlighted: talent is limited, and the winners in humanoid robots are going to increasingly attract the best talent, draining it away from those who will come – at best – in second place.

When I interviewed CEO Jeff Cardenas a year ago he laid out a three-phase roadmap: industrial and logistics through 2026, then retail/healthcare/hospitality, then eventually eldercare and the home as the long-term "North Star."

He was also pretty clear about what scaling actually requires.

"You don't just build the robot," Cardenas told me. "You build the machine that builds the machine."

Today’s hires are, in essence, that first machine : the operational, product, and go-to-market apparatus that helps determine whether a humanoid robot company becomes a winner or withers on the vine. Apptronik’s competitors know this too. Figure has raised nearly $3 billion and is scaling production. Tesla is reportedly putting $20 billion of capex into Optimus and self-driving in 2026. Chinese players like Unitree are shipping units in volume already and Unitree has shipped 5,000 in the last three months.

Soon, the race will not be about who can demo a robot folding laundry, dancing, or putting stuff in a box for shipping. It’s going to be about which companies can support fleets of humanoid robots in production environments doing real work.

The headline hires are Daniel Chu and Kevin Garell. Daniel Chu joins as Chief Product Officer after holding the same title at Waymo, where he built the product organization that brought the world’s first fully autonomous ride-hailing service to market. Kevin Garell is the new SVP of services and support. He’s formerly from Boston Dynamics, where he led the global services build-out that took the company from R&D to some level of commercial operation. Both parts of this, productization and customer support, are going to be critical as Apptronik scales. Adding a VP of software who had AI roles at Amazon in Chirag Shah is another important piece of the puzzle.

"Throughout my career I’ve been drawn to the 'impossible’ problems — the ones that, when solved, fundamentally change how we live for the better," Chu said in a statement. "What brought me to Apptronik is a team with deep robotics expertise, real-world progress, and an unwavering commitment to building robots that serve humanity."

Cardenas, for his part, framed the broader leadership refresh in the same terms he used with me last year — the urgency of the moment.

"We are at a defining moment in robotics where the technology has finally met the magnitude of the mission," CEO Cardenas said. "Our expanded leadership team represents the best minds from the companies that defined the last decade of technology, and they've joined Apptronik to define the next one."

He added a significant statement:

"We have the talent, the technology, and the momentum to bring AI-powered humanoid robots to the world at scale.”

Of course, there’s one more thing: Apptronik also teased a new humanoid robot, saying that the company is preparing to unveil it.

That sounds like a new robot, not just a new version of Apollo, its existing humanoid robot. Apollo is Apptronik’s general-purpose humanoid robot, standing roughly six feet tall and capable of lifting up to 55 pounds while operating up to 22 hours a day across multiple shifts. It has 42 degrees of freedom, and its intelligence is increasingly powered by Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics models under a strategic partnership announced last year. Apollo is currently deployed in commercial pilots with Mercedes-Benz, GXO Logistics, and Jabil.

What Apptronik’s new robot will be, I guess we will find out soon enough.