Ultra-deep tech startup Nirvanic put on a fairly humble-looking robotics demo at Jeff Bezos's private MARS 2025 conference – and while the team is adamant that this implies no endorsement from Bezos or Amazon, it may go down as a landmark moment both in AI robotics, and in our understanding of consciousness itself.

We're going to some strange places with this one, folks, so I'm compelled to point out from the very beginning that Nirvanic is a legit company, founded by one of the most remarkable innovators I've run across in 20-odd years of technology journalism.

British-born Canadian Suzanne Gildert started her remarkable career with a Ph.D in Experimental Quantum Computing and several years creating quantum AI algorithms for D-Wave. She then co-founded Kindred AI, working on industrial AI robotics, and did rather well with that, leading to the third-largest exit in Canadian robotics startup history at a third of a billion Canadian dollars. Next, she co-founded Sanctuary AI, where she also served as CTO through the development of one of the world's most advanced humanoid robots, Phoenix