Karl Horne

At Manifest 2026, Scott Luton spent time with Josh Gruenstein, Co-Founder and CEO of Tutor Intelligence, to talk about a future that’s no longer theoretical: AI-powered robot workers operating inside America’s warehouses and factories. And this isn’t a science experiment. It’s already happening.   From MIT to the Warehouse Floor Gruenstein and his team came out of MIT’s Computer Science and AI Lab with a bold idea: build AI-powered robot workers that can handle the manual labor people don’t want to do. “We build physical robots,” Gruenstein explained. “We build AI models that enable robots to perceive their environments, and then we deploy those robots into factories and warehouses across the United States to do manual labor that people don’t want to do.” Unlike traditional automation projects that require massive capital outlays, Tutor Intelligence operates on a robots-as-a-service model. Companies can engage a Tutor robot for roughly $14–$18 an hour, creating a flexible, scalable path to automation without multimillion-dollar implementation risk.   Automation Isn’t New. AI Is Changing the Playbook. When asked about dominant supply chain themes, Gruenstein pointed to a constant drumbeat: automation. But 2026 feels different. “Automation is obviously a constant theme,” he said. “What really seems different…

Back in the day, business news and ideas often flowed from office watercooler conversations. Then company figureheads started popping up on cable TV news programs, lecturing on stock market drops, trade increases, industry gains, and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain shortfalls. Now, podcasts are all the rage, and it can be difficult to stand out in a crowded field. There’s a lot of noise in supply chain podcasts, in particular. How do you break through to share your supply chain insights with potentially millions of listeners? Supply Chain Podcasts: Meeting Industry Leaders Where They Are It’s said that public radio host Christopher Lydon used an audio RSS feed developed by software engineer Dave Winer to provide audio content of interviews on his blog in 2003. A year later, iPodder was created to enable users to download audio content to their iPods, and the word podcast was born. This year, the number of podcast listeners is forecast to reach a whopping 254.3 million. Podcasts have become the place for industry leaders to find an eager audience. Breaking Through: 3 Ways Supply Chain Podcasts Cut Through the Noise Today, there are thousands of podcasts that are touted as supply chain-focused. In…