Persona AI, a new humanoid robotics company, was founded last month by Nic Radford and Jerry Pratt, who are entering the commercial humanoid space despite past pessimism. Radford, who left Nauticus in January, said he initially wanted nothing to do with humanoids but became excited by rapid changes in the field. Pratt, who recently left Figure due primarily to the two-body problem, emphasized persistence and a pragmatic, realistic optimism about commercial aspects. The company aims to tackle the difficult problem of making highly technical hardware and software compete with humans in the labor market, viewing it as a very big opportunity. Persona does not need to be the first, best funded, or highest profile company; it simply must succeed. Step one is building a founding team across two locations: Houston and Pensacola, Fla. Radford noted that response to a couple of LinkedIn posts about Persona has been “tremendous,” and a substantial seed investment is in the works to attract top talent. The co-founders had considered starting a humanoids company as far back as 2008, but viability was not there then.