Diligent Robotics, pioneers of socially-intelligent, AI-native humanoid robots deployed at scale in human environments, announced that two former Cruise executives have joined its leadership team: Rashed Haq as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Todd Brugger as Chief Operating Officer (COO). With strong expertise in autonomous vehicles and AI, the duo will accelerate the company’s growth and expansion beyond its initial focus on U.S. hospital logistics.
Haq most recently served as Cruise’s VP, Head of AI and Robotics, where he played a key role in building autonomy for self-driving vehicles and scaling operations to 5+ million miles of fully driverless rides across multiple cities. As CTO of Diligent Robotics, he will focus on building the AI roadmap and unlocking new capabilities for the company’s flagship humanoid robot, Moxi.
Brugger, formerly COO of Cruise, oversaw the scaling of robotaxi operations from zero to over 500 cars on the road. At Diligent, his new role as COO will focus on scaling the full lifecycle of the business—from building and deploying robots to supporting them in real-world environments and driving commercial strategy for broader market applications.
“As one of the most sensitive and high-stakes environments you could deploy in, hospitals have been the ultimate proving ground for our technology,” said Dr. Andrea Thomaz, CEO and Co-Founder of Diligent Robotics. “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 into broader commercial applications.”
Since inception, Diligent Robotics has advanced healthcare automation with Moxi—the only humanoid robot actively deployed at scale in complex, real-world hospital environments. Moxi has been adopted by more than 30 U.S. hospitals, completing over one million deliveries and saving staff nearly 600,000 hours of work, reducing burnout and improving efficiency. Leading healthcare providers such as Providence Health and Cedars-Sinai are among its adopters.
“Humanoids and embodied AI systems represent one of the largest industries of our future, akin to foundational sectors like energy and transportation,” said Haq. “Diligent’s traction in ADA-compliant hospital environments proves product-market fit, and their pragmatic approach to building a data flywheel paves the way for expansion into new industries.”
“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,” said Brugger. “Diligent stood out because of their focus on execution over pure research. I’m excited to help scale what they’re already doing—earning trust, ensuring safety, and creating feedback loops between deployments and engineering.”
“The tech stack powering our robots draws on many of the same core technologies as self-driving cars—multi-modal perception, predicting human behaviors, and real-time planning under uncertainty,” said Vivian Chu, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Diligent Robotics. “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 the massive opportunity to apply their experience from self-driving to human-aware manipulation and mobility.”
To learn more about Diligent Robotics and its groundbreaking work in AI-powered robotics, visit diligentrobots.com.
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