Benjamin Reinhardt

Ben Reinhardt is the founder and director of Speculative Technologies, a nonprofit industrial research lab dedicated to unlocking an abundant future through technologies that don’t have a home in other institutions. He also hosts the Idea Machines Podcast, where he holds long-form conversations with experts across different innovation systems.
Previously, Ben helped ambitious people build teams and companies at Entrepreneur First in Singapore, served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Susa Ventures, and worked on robotics solutions to help older adults live independently at home. He began his career at Magic Leap, working on computer vision, and holds a PhD from Cornell, where he built tractor beams for space robots at NASA. He studied mechanical engineering at Caltech, where he also explored the historical transition from amphorae to barrels.