Podcast – NewSpaceVision

NewSpaceVision

NewSpaceVision's goal is to grow the European (New)Space startup scene and build awareness for the unique applications of space-related hard and software. NSV acts as the starting point for aspiring entrepreneurs and skillful engineers from all kinds of fields to find contact points to existing companies or find colleagues, inspirations and resources to start their own venture. linkedin.com/company/newspacevision twitter.com/NewSpaceVision instagram.com/newspacevision facebook.com/newspacevision www.youtube.com/channel/UCNPQTpwfZZlc2aO4SuXjoUQ

How do you build hardware like software?

For our 50th episode, we sit down with Karthik Gollapudi, Co-Founder of SIFT, to break down what happens when the fast, iterative mindset of software development is applied to aerospace, defense, robotics, and other physical systems.

Karthik spent more than four years at SpaceX, working on simulation and flight software for Dragon. He saw first-hand how SpaceX’s culture of rapid iteration and continuous testing could make incredibly complex hardware development move faster. When he started wondering whether these principles could become the foundation for a company, he called his now co-founder – who told him that “four different companies are actually trying to hire me to build that.”

Today, SIFT is building the observability layer for hardware: bringing telemetry, logs, video, and other data together to continuously monitor the health of complex systems and understand what changed when something goes wrong.

We discuss:

🚀 How SpaceX applies software development principles to hardware

🔍 Why hardware needs continuous observability – not occasional testing

📡 The challenge of making sense of telemetry, logs, video, and multiple time sources

🤖 How AI could fundamentally change the way physical systems are designed and built

💰 Lessons from building SIFT, raising $70M+, and convincing investors to back a new category

Karthik also shares his perspective on where AI-driven hardware development is heading – from autonomous systems that discover solutions humans wouldn't think of to physical structures that look more like biology than traditional engineering.

A conversation about the technology, culture, and infrastructure needed to build the next generation of hardware – faster.

Follow Karthik and SIFT:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthikgollapudi

https://www.siftstack.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/sift-stack/

https://www.youtube.com/@Siftstack

https://www.instagram.com/siftstack/?hl=en

https://x.com/SiftStack

Follow NewSpaceVision:

https://de.linkedin.com/company/newspacevision

https://twitter.com/newspacevision

https://www.instagram.com/newspacevision/