Diligent Robotics, developers of AI-native humanoid robots, have appointed two former Cruise executives to its leadership team: Rashed Haq as chief technology officer (CTO) and Todd Brugger as chief operating officer (COO).
With deep technical and commercial go-to-market expertise in autonomous vehicles and AI, the pair will help fuel the company’s next phase of growth as it gears up for expansion beyond its initial application of US hospital logistics.
Haq most recently served as Cruise’s VP, head of AI and Robotics, where he built the foundation of end-to-end autonomy for self-driving vehicles and helped scale Cruise to 5+ million miles of fully driverless vehicles in 5+ cities.
With deep expertise in deploying production AI at scale, his new role as Diligent’s CTO will be hyper-focused on continuing to build the AI roadmap and unlocking new capabilities for its flagship humanoid robot, Moxi.
Brugger most recently served as COO of Cruise, where he led Cruise’s robotaxi operations and created the framework to scale its fleet from 0-500+ cars on the road.
His new role as Diligent’s COO will focus on driving supply chain and commercial strategy, bringing more robots to market across healthcare and beyond.
Dr Andrea Thomaz, CEO and co-founder of Diligent Robotics, says: “As one of the most sensitive and high-stakes environments you could deploy in, hospitals have been the ultimate proving ground for our technology.
“We’ve already seen a remarkable impact, and with Rashed and Todd’s seasoned leadership from their time at Cruise, we’re well-positioned to scale.
“Their expertise will be instrumental as we accelerate AI-driven product development and expand the reach of our humanoid robots into broader commercial applications.”
Since its inception, Diligent Robotics has advanced AI-powered healthcare automation with Moxi, the only humanoid robot actively operating in complex, real-world environments at scale.
Moxi has been deployed in more than 30 hospitals across the US, achieving over one million deliveries and saving hospital staff nearly 600,000 hours to combat burnout.
Adopted by major US hospitals and healthcare systems, including Providence Health and Cedars-Sinai, Diligent is deploying real, working robots into clinical environments to directly address workforce shortages and workflow inefficiencies.
Haq says: “Humanoids and embodied AI systems represent one of the largest industries of our future, akin to foundational sectors like energy and transportation.
“Diligent’s traction in critical, ADA-compliant environments like hospitals is a clear proof point for product-market fit, and the team’s pragmatic approach to creating a data flywheel reinforces their ability to build new form factors for applications in other industries.”
Brugger says: “From spending my career helping new technologies make the leap from R&D to real-world deployment, it’s clear that AI and robotics are at a historic inflection point.
“Diligent stood out because of their focus on execution over R&D. I’m excited to help scale what they’re already doing – earning trust, ensuring safety, and creating feedback loops from deployments to engineering.”
Vivian Chu, co-founder and chief innovation officer of Diligent Robotics, says: “The tech stack powering our robots draws on many of the same core technologies as self-driving cars – multi-modal perception, real-time planning, deep learning, and more.
“But deploying AI-native humanoid robots at scale in human environments is the next frontier of autonomy.
“That’s exactly why Rashed and Todd are joining us – they see what we see: a massive opportunity to apply their experience scaling self-driving to the even more complex domain of human-aware manipulation.”
