Want to build a robot snowman?

Nvidia’s GTC conference had everything from forecasts of trillion-dollar sales, the graphics technology that could make video games awesome, a grand declaration that every company needs an OpenClaw strategy, and even a robot version of Olaf, the beloved snowman from Disney’s Frozen.

In the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I recap CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote and discuss what it means for Nvidia’s future. And yes, most of our discussion was focused on poor Olaf, who had to turn off his microphone when the tirade began.

Even if the demo had gone perfectly, Sean probably still had some reservations, as he noted that these presentations are always focused on “engineering challenges” rather than the “really messy gray areas” of the social side.

“But what happens if a child kicks Olaf?” Sean asked. “So you’re saying that any other kids who see Olaf kicking or falling will ruin their entire Disney trip and ruin the brand?”

Read a preview of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Anthony: (CEO Jensen Huang) is basically saying that every company now has to have an OpenClaw strategy. I think that’s a very grand statement to get attention. I think it’s interesting that OpenClaw is going through such a transition.

The founder went to OpenAI. So now this open source project can potentially thrive and develop beyond its creators, or it can languish. If a company like Nvidia is investing heavily in this, it’s more likely to continue to evolve. But it will be interesting to see a year from now. Does that seem like a prescient statement or is everyone asking “Open what?”

Kirsten: For Nvidia, it doesn’t cost much to get started with NemoClaw, an open source project built with the creators of OpenClaw. But you have a lot to lose if you do nothing. When Jensen said, “Every company needs an OpenClaw strategy,” the message I translated was, “Nvidia needs a solution or a strategy for the company, because if it’s successful, it’s another way or another path for Nvidia to become part of a lot of other companies.” So doing nothing is a greater risk than doing something that goes nowhere.

Sean: The real question here is why we haven’t talked about what Nvidia’s end game is and what will turn Nvidia into the first $100 trillion company: the Olaf robot.

Anthony: How could I forget?

Kirsten: Anthony, if you want to see this, go all the way to the end, about 2 hours and 30 minutes.

So the Olaf robot comes into play, which is something Jensen likes to do. He likes these demos, some better than others. It’s also meant to showcase Nvidia’s technology in the field of robotics, though I don’t know if Olaf was actually speaking in real time or if he was programmed to do so. It feels a bit programmed or certain keywords are used.

But the biggest part was that they had to cut the mic off at the end because he started raving and talking to the crowd. Then we went over to a small passage and slowly went down. And you could check it out in the video. I’m still on the phone, but there’s no microphone.

Sean: Now all we have to do is give this little robot a wheelbase. And I know the perfect founder who can provide that.

I mean, these demos are always stupid. I don’t want to wake up to a soap opera, because I know we talked about this a little bit earlier this week. But this was an impressive demo right up to the moment where it fell a little short.

This is another really good example of why robotics is a really interesting engineering problem, a really interesting physics problem, a really interesting integration problem, and all of these things. However, this was presented in partnership with Disney and is expected to be the future of Disney parks. You’ll be able to walk around and take pictures of Olaf from “Frozen.”

But these efforts never take into account all the other things that need to be considered when launching a product like this, or put it at the center of an event like this. There’s a really great YouTuber, Defunctland, who made a really good four-hour video about the history of Disney trying to bring this kind of robotics, or automaton, into the parks.

Engineering challenges are really interesting and it’s fun to look at their history. But it always comes back to the same question: Okay, but what happens if the kid kicks Olaf? And for every other kid who sees Olaf kicking or falling over, is that ruining their entire trip to Disney and ruining the brand?

There is so much to the social aspect of this. It may sound silly, but this is a question we also ask about humanoid robots. There’s so much hype about all these different things, but we don’t hear a lot of conversation about the really messy gray areas of the social side of these things and integrating them into people’s lives. We’ve actually heard about engineering challenges. This is again really impressive.

Kirsten: There is a counterpoint and you have to move on to the next (topic). This is a job creation because Olaf needs to have a human babysitter in Disneyland like Elsa or something else. You can imagine that what we’re actually doing is creating jobs through this engineering experiment.