Brad Porter

Founder & CEO Cobot (Collaborative Robotics)

Last Reviewed: September 23, 2026

Executive Summary

Brad Porter is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cobot, the Santa Clara company formally named Collaborative Robotics Inc., which builds Proxie, a mobile robot with two arms that moves carts and materials alongside people in hospitals, factories and warehouses. He founded the company in 2022 after 13 years at Amazon, where he was Vice President and Distinguished Engineer in Amazon Robotics and, by the company’s account, oversaw the deployment of more than 500,000 robots. He then spent a period as Chief Technology Officer of Scale AI. His argument for Cobot is a middle path. General-purpose humanoids are, as he put it at launch, “hard and a long ways off,” and he aims for robots that can handle human tasks without taking human form. Cobot raised a $100 million Series B led by General Catalyst in 2024 and released a second-generation Proxie in June 2026.

Career Highlights

• Founded Collaborative Robotics in 2022 with Steph Tryphonas and is its Chief Executive Officer.
• Raised a $10 million seed round led by Neo in 2022, a Series A backed by Sequoia, Mayo Clinic and Khosla Ventures, and a $100 million Series B led by General Catalyst in April 2024.
• Opened a Seattle engineering office in 2024 alongside the Santa Clara headquarters. Cobot now reports more than 130 employees.
• Launched Proxie Gen2 in June 2026. By then first-generation robots had logged 12,627 production operating hours and moved more than 40 million pounds of material for customers including Maersk, Mayo Clinic and Owens & Minor.
• Spent 13 years at Amazon, leaving in August 2020 as Vice President and Distinguished Engineer in Amazon Robotics, then became Chief Technology Officer of Scale AI.

Professional Journey

Porter studied computer science at MIT, and Cobot’s own account says he spent his childhood building robots. His longest chapter was at Amazon, thirteen years in all, ending as Vice President and Distinguished Engineer in Amazon Robotics, the organization that automated the company’s fulfillment network. Cobot credits him with deploying more than half a million robots there. He left in August 2020 and joined Scale AI, the data-labeling and AI infrastructure company, as Chief Technology Officer, where he worked on the data side of machine learning for about two years.

He founded Collaborative Robotics in 2022 with Steph Tryphonas. At launch, TechCrunch reported a $10 million seed round led by Neo, with Khosla Ventures, Calibrate Ventures and 1984 Ventures. Porter chose a practical form factor. Humanoid robots were attracting attention and money, and specialized mobile robots were already common in warehouses. He said Cobot would aim at “something much more pragmatic in the middle”: a robot able to work in spaces built for people and around them, without trying to look like them.

The company raised a Series A backed by Sequoia, Mayo Clinic and Khosla Ventures, and in April 2024 a $100 million Series B led by General Catalyst with Bison Ventures, Industry Ventures and Lux Capital, which took total funding past $140 million. That June it opened a Seattle office near the University of Washington and brought in Michael Vogelsong, another Amazon alumnus, to lead a foundation-models team. Porter’s pitch for Seattle was its concentration of AI talent from Oculus, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

Proxie reached customers including Maersk, Mayo Clinic and Owens & Minor, and Cobot later added an advisory services program and further products, Vista and ScoutMap. In June 2026 the company unveiled Proxie Gen2 at Automate in Chicago. The new robot combines mobility and dual-arm manipulation, lifts 200 pounds vertically, moves 1,500-pound carts and runs its AI locally, with pricing from $5,000 a month. Its headline feature is what Cobot calls autotasking: the robot works out from its own model of the environment what needs doing, then does it without software integration. Porter described it as a robot that “moves, manipulates, and orchestrates its own work.”

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Computer Science

Cobot’s own site says he earned his degrees in computer science at MIT. It does not specify the degree levels.