Meet the Founders

Sidekick Robotics was founded by twin brothers Mark Garo Ansell and Andrew Raffi Ansell, lifelong friends who have always been each other's sidekick. With Mechanical Engineering roots at UC Berkeley, experience as lead product managers at Microsoft Devices, and MBAs from Stanford GSB, they bring a rare blend of technical depth and business execution.

This idea was born and refined in 7 graduate level courses at Stanford University, across both the Engineering (AI, Robotics, Deep Reinforcement Learning) and Business (Startup Garage, Entrepreneurship & VC, Longevity, Healthcare) schools.

They launched Sidekick Robotics to confront a historic healthcare labor crisis: hospitals, eldercare communities, and healthcare operations are overwhelmed, costs are rising, and the global aging population is accelerating demand. Previous robotics efforts have fallen short, lacking the intelligence and dexterity now made possible by robotic AI foundation models.

By starting with the overlooked but critical wedge of laundry automation and expanding outward, they are building the "AI Sidekick for physical work." True to their name and their story, Sidekick Robotics is about creating robots that stand alongside people as trusted teammates in the most essential work and an urgent effort to meet one of society's greatest challenges.