Laplace Intelligence red-teams robots and self-driving cars before they hit the real world

Laplace Intelligence, a University of Michigan spinout based in Ann Arbor, is developing automated red-teaming for robotics and physical AI. The company uses a high-fidelity, interactive simulation environment built on a post-trained version of Nvidia's Cosmos to reconstruct real-world locations, combined with AI agents that automatically design corner cases to stress-test systems. Founded by CEO Howie Sun and chief scientist Henry Liu, Laplace aims to help companies find and fix problems before deployment, building trust with customers, insurers, and regulators. Despite its academic origins, the startup is generating revenue—mostly from autonomous driving use cases—with customers including Bot Auto and a major Japanese automaker. It is also working with Nvidia and T-Mobile on a smart city pilot in San Jose, and early-stage with humanoid robotics partners. Competing in Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, Laplace seeks funding to scale against rivals like Applied Intuition, betting its AI-tests-AI methodology will be a key moat.

(Source：TechCrunch)