What began as a logistical gamble ended as a defining milestone for Bucket Robotics, as the young company made its first appearance at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Facing uncertain weather and flight delays, founder and CEO Matt Puchalski chose to drive booth equipment himself, renting a Hyundai Santa Fe and making a 12-hour journey through heavy rain to ensure nothing went wrong.
“It was… it was tight,” he said with a laugh on the show floor.
San Francisco-based Bucket Robotics, backed by Y Combinator, was one of thousands of exhibitors at CES. Tucked into the automotive-focused West Hall, the company stood out less for scale and more for stamina. Puchalski said the experience was worth it, driven by constant pitching, sharp observation, and non-stop networking.
An engineer by training, Puchalski spent nearly a decade working on autonomous vehicle programs at Uber, Argo AI, Ford’s Latitude AI, and SoftBank-backed Stack AV. Those years helped him build deep industry connections, many of which surfaced during CES through late-night conversations, networking events, and impromptu technical debates.
Bucket Robotics, founded as part of YC’s Spring 2024 batch, focuses on automating surface quality inspection using advanced vision systems. The company targets a task that is still largely manual in manufacturing. As Puchalski put it, “It’s deeply hard to automate these types of challenges without huge volumes of data, so auto manufacturers just throw dudes in Wisconsin at this problem.”
Bucket Robotics addresses this by using CAD files to simulate defects such as burn marks, bumps, and breaks. These simulations train its vision models without manual data labeling. The system can deploy “in minutes,” adapt to changes in products or production lines, and integrate into existing manufacturing setups without adding new hardware.
Bucket Robotics has already attracted customers in automotive and defense, positioning itself as a “dual-use” company. When the show opened, the first 2 hours were “intense,” with steady interest continuing throughout the week. Puchalski said he has since spent days on follow-up calls with potential customers and investors.
While CES is often exhausting, Bucket Robotics came through intact. The bigger challenge now lies ahead: scaling operations, raising capital, and securing commercial deals. As for concerns about automation replacing jobs, Puchalski said those roles also involve diagnosing root causes, not just spotting defects.
“So when we go to our customers, it’s incredibly exciting,” he said.
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