Wendy Tan White leads robotics software and AI company Intrinsic, which is focused on making industrial robots easier to use and train. Intrinsic initially sat outside of Google at Alphabet, as part of its “Other Bets” group, which includes businesses such as Waymo. But in February this year, Intrinsic was brought into Google as a separate entity, working closely with DeepMind and using Google’s Gemini models and cloud services.

In September, Intrinsic announced that it would be making its basic software—needed to build and operate industrial robots—freely available, or open source. The aim is to give smaller manufacturers the ability to use robots without having to spend vast sums on custom technology. In the longer term, Google and Intrinsic hope to become the providers of the platform that powers what gets built on top of that software. Tan White sees this as the “Android for robotics and AI.”

Tan White has experience as an entrepreneur, investor and operator. She co-founded U.K.…