Benjamin Smidt

Benjamin Smidt is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Miru, a robotics and IoT software management company based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2024 alongside Armel Talla and Vedant Nair, the three-employee startup participated in the Y Combinator Summer 2024 batch under the guidance of Group Partner Aaron Epstein. At Miru, Smidt leads technical development for a platform that provides GitHub-based over-the-air updates for robot and IoT fleets. Prior to this role, he founded Clips AI, where he engineered production-ready artificial intelligence models and built video processing servers utilizing Kubernetes. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, having initially studied mechanical engineering for two years. His current focus centers on bridging software deployment with physical devices through advanced artificial intelligence infrastructure and hardware engineering.