He Raised $78 Million To Build Software-Driven Robotics To Automate Moving And Storing Goods In Warehouses

Chris Walti is a seasoned engineer and entrepreneur whose career spans across world-class companies like Tesla and innovative startups. His story is one of resilience, constant reinvention, and an unwavering passion for building, culminating in the establishment of Mytra.

In this insightful interview, Chris shared invaluable insights on building a world-class team, navigating the complexities of robotics, raising funding, and what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

A Childhood of Constant Change

Chris’ early life laid the foundation for his adaptability. Born in Alexandria, Virginia, to a military family, he was used to frequent relocations. Every two years, his family would pack up and move to a new place.

This nomadic lifestyle, which eventually led Chris to graduate high school in Plano, Texas, was a key factor in shaping his perspective. “You learn not to hold on too much to the past and always look to the future,” he said.

Chris explained how moving frequently allowed him to be resilient and adaptable—two traits that have been crucial in his entrepreneurial journey. “It gives you an opportunity to continually reinvent yourself.”

Chris drew parallels between his childhood and his startup journey, where the ability to pivot quickly and learn from mistakes is key to survival. He referenced Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup, noting, “Your job is not to build a product, but to learn what customers want.”

This mindset, honed from his constant moves as a child, has guided his entrepreneurial ventures.

The Engineer at Heart

After completing high school, Chris went to Central Illinois. Though he initially dreamed of becoming an architect, his realization that he couldn’t draw led him to pursue engineering. “I wanted to build stuff. I knew that was my future,” he shared.

Electrical engineering, in particular, stood out because it was at the intersection of mechanical and software engineering—fields Chris loved for their practicality and problem-solving potential. He also wanted to build things, believing he was on the planet to do just that.

Reflecting on his academic and early career choices, Chris said he wished he had leaned more into systems engineering, a discipline that focuses on the integration of various engineering fields.

His interests, passions, and strengths lay in different disciplines without going super deep into any specific one. Chris eventually went to university to study electrical engineering, dabbled in consulting, and worked in a Spanish company for a time.

Looking back at his entrepreneurial initiatives, Chris stresses the importance of understanding the customers’ pain points instead of “building hammers looking for nails.” That is key to building a meaningful, lasting, generational company.

Working at ACCIONA

Chris went to work at ACCIONA in the renewable energy sector. Working with oil and gas and renewable energy companies, he noted that the huge lack of energy storage was a deterrent to getting more renewables on the grid.

They needed to create an element of dispatchability and find solutions to store the commodity. As Chris points out, electricity is the only commodity, basically produced and consumed in real time unlike corn, hydrocarbons, rice, and other consumables.

These items are produced and decoupled from consumption. This experience further reinforced Chris’ perspective that developing a deep understanding of the industry’s pain points and the ability to build a team around them is crucial to tackling the engineering disciplines.

Tastebud Technologies: The First Entrepreneurial Leap

Chris’s first startup, Tastebud Technologies, was a leap into the unknown. The company focused on quantifying consumer preferences, or “psychographics,” rather than relying solely on demographics like age or location.

“We believed there was a novel way to quantify how people make decisions,” he explained. The idea was born during a trip to Spain, where Chris and a co-founder brainstormed ways to bring more personalized marketing to brick-and-mortar stores.

Though Tastebud Technologies was a success in many ways—raising significant funding and even partnering with major companies like Amazon—Chris candidly shared the challenges of the business.

Despite developing groundbreaking technology, the business model wasn’t fully clear. They found a great customer in a retail shopping center, ultimately leading them to operate more as a service provider than a product company.

As Chris recalls, the company was undergoing a transformation and working out solutions to deal with the threat of more customers moving their shopping online. Their objective was to use technology to replicate the online shopping experience to physical stores.

Despite the challenges, the experience was invaluable. “We raised a fair bit of money and eventually went through an acquisition,” Chris noted. He and his co-founder, Tyler, sold the company to Raise.com. Tyler opted to stay in assuming the position of CTO.

This exit opened new doors, and soon after, Chris joined Cal Lankton at Tesla, where his engineering expertise would truly shine.

Tesla: A Builder’s Dream

Chris spent over seven years at Tesla, a company known for its relentless drive toward innovation and execution. His role evolved multiple times, allowing him to contribute to some of Tesla’s most critical initiatives, including the Supercharging team and the mobile robotics division.

“Tesla is a builder’s dream,” Chris shared with excitement. “It’s one of the few places where you spend 80% of your time building and 20% in meetings. You have some of the best engineers in the world around you, and you’re working on problems that have massive impact.”

Chris was impressed by the clear path engineers followed. They solved significant problems with lots of responsibility and accountability, very aggressive tech timelines, and disruptive technology. The atmosphere fit perfectly with his builder mindset.

Chris also talks about how Tesla offers more satisfaction and impact than any other company. Almost everything being done involves some level of entrepreneurship. Engineers must compete for a limited amount of capital dollars and find a market for internal and external products.

Chris ended up creating the mobile robotics team to develop internal solutions for Tesla. His solutions would be used in dozens of innovative factories around the world, not just final assembly plants but also sub-factories and other supporting factories.

At Tesla, Chris saw firsthand how manufacturing challenges nearly crippled the company. The complexity of automation equipment—conveyors, elevators, sensors, programmable logic controllers, and the software—often didn’t keep pace with Tesla’s rapid innovation.

The rapid pace at which Tesla was innovating and changing the product and process was and is fundamentally incompatible with the current state-of-the-art technology. Tesla is iterating internally, shaping the product, and designing it to comply with inefficient manufacturing systems.

Mytra: Solving Material Flow in Factories

After Tesla, Chris reflected on the most pressing problems in the industrial space. Material flow—the process of moving goods within factories and warehouses—stood out as a glaring inefficiency.

“Material flow is about 80% of the work in a warehouse and 40% in a manufacturing facility,” Chris explained. Despite its simplicity, most factories and warehouses still relied on manual labor or hundreds of complex machines that are difficult to maintain.

With Mytra, Chris is taking a first-principles approach to solving this problem. The goal is to create a vertically integrated system that can seamlessly move materials through a factory or warehouse.

“If we can come up with the simplest piece of equipment to do the most amount of work, we can disrupt the industry,” Chris said. He likened the current state of industrial automation to an auto show where consumers are forced to choose between a Formula 1 race car or a horse.

“Most people choose the horse because at least they know how to maintain it,” Chris quipped. Most people don’t have the technological skill, fortitude, or patience to maintain a high precision, complex, and bespoke asset.

Mytra aims to be the “Toyota Camry” of industrial automation—affordable, reliable, and easy to maintain. It serves as a cardiovascular system for a facility, including the steel racking structure, and a robot that moves up, down, left, right, in all directions, up to 3,000 pounds.

The industrial pallet weighs up to 3,000 pounds, which is the common denominator across the supply chain. The product also includes the software that manages the entire setup. Apart from some interface stations, the bot is the only actuated, powered, and sensed instrument in the system.

The rest is just steel. The Mytra business model is for customers to buy and install the steel structure. Next, they can purchase or lease the robot and license the software. Mytra also provides a bumper-to-bumper maintenance or warranty program.

Fundraising for Mytra

Chris reveals that Mytra has raised a total of $78M across three funding rounds. The journey hasn’t been easy, but investors have been keen to back sectors like industrial, supply chain, and manufacturing. This is a huge area of investment, and lots of capital is flowing into it.

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Chris stresses executing according to plan, building a great team, and ensuring customer satisfaction to attract funding. Having top-notch talent has been crucial for Mytra. As Chris explains, a variety of engineering disciplines are needed to build an integrated hardware-software company.

Errors can cost the company money and time. Being even six to 12 months late in delivering orders can result in running out of runway quickly. Customers lose confidence, which can activate the death spiral.

As Chris explains, team building in this industry is about trust and personal relationships. Employees should trust the vision and believe in the market and the peers they’ll join.

Since Chris had experience on the interview panels for mechanical, electrical, software, AI positions, and more, he knew how to build the perfect team. In his opinion, the team is like the foundation of a house, which has to be solid.

Future Vision for Mytra

Today, around 10% of manufacturing and warehousing facilities are automated and have workers moving merchandise. Chris envisions a world where facilities have humans doing tasks focusing on edge reasoning, manipulation, and high-value, gratifying tasks.

Mytra could help cut back shipping, development, and the turnaround cycle of supply chains. Up to 25% to 40% fewer things could be stored in supply chains since they are easy to locate. Spending less time in the warehouse enables building products much faster because of efficiency.

Consumers increasingly want faster deliveries, and Mytra could contribute to a much more efficient and happier world where people can do the jobs they enjoy.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

One thing that has remained constant throughout Chris’ career is his passion for building—whether it’s innovative products or world-class teams. “Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur,” Chris said, reflecting on his journey.

While invaluable, his time at Tesla was always a stepping stone to his next big idea. Chris’ story is a powerful reminder that entrepreneurship isn’t just about coming up with a brilliant idea. It’s about resilience, adaptability, and a deep understanding of the problems you’re solving.

Whether quantifying consumer preferences or streamlining material flow in factories, Chris has proven that with the right mindset and team, you can disrupt industries and create lasting impact.

In the end, it’s clear that Chris Walti isn’t just a builder of products—he’s a builder of companies, teams, and ideas that have the potential to change the world.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• Chris Walti’s childhood taught him resilience and adaptability, crucial traits in his entrepreneurial journey.
• His first startup, Tastebud Technologies, highlighted the importance of solving real customer pain points, not just building technology.
• At Tesla, Chris thrived in a builder’s environment, driving innovation in critical projects like mobile robotics and Supercharging.
• Chris founded Mytra to solve inefficiencies in material flow within factories, aiming to disrupt industrial automation with simplicity and reliability.
• Mytra’s business model focuses on an integrated hardware-software solution with a “Toyota Camry” approach to industrial automation.
• Team building and customer satisfaction have been key to Mytra’s success in raising $78M across three funding rounds.
• Chris envisions a future where industrial automation frees workers to focus on more fulfilling, high-value tasks.

 

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