Do you want to build a robot snowman?

Nvidia’s GTC conference had it all: trillion-dollar sales projections, graphics technology that could take advantage of video games, big declarations that every company needs an OpenClaw strategy, and even a robotic version of beloved snowman Olaf from Disney’s “Frozen.”

In the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosik, Sean O’Kane, and I recap CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote and discuss what it means for Nvidia’s future. And yes, much of our discussion focused on poor Olaf, whose microphone had to be turned off when he started wandering off.

Even if the demo went flawlessly, Sean might still have some reservations, as he noted that these presentations always focus on the “engineering challenges” and not the “really messy gray areas” on the social side.

“But what happens when Olaf’s baby kicks?” Sean asked. “And then every other kid who sees Olaf getting kicked or knocked over ruins their entire trip to Disney and it ruins the brand?”

Read a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.

Anthony: [CEO Jensen Huang] He was basically saying that every company needs to have an OpenClaw strategy now. I think this is just a very big statement meant to attract attention; I think it’s also interesting that we’re coming into this kind of transitional moment for OpenClaw.

The founder has gone to OpenAI. So this is an open source project that is likely to flourish and develop far beyond its creator, or it may languish. If companies like Nvidia invest that much in it, then [it’s] It will likely continue to develop. But it’ll be interesting to see a year from now, whether that sounds like a prescient statement or like, “Open what?”

Kirsten: In Nvidia’s case, it costs them nothing in the grand scheme of things to launch what they call NemoClaw, an open source project, which they built with the creator of OpenClaw. But if they do nothing, they will have a lot to lose. So, really that message to me, the way I translated it when Jensen said, “Every enterprise needs an OpenClaw strategy,” was, “Nvidia needs an enterprise solution or strategy, because if it works, it’s another way or another path for Nvidia to be part of many other companies.” So doing nothing represents a greater risk than doing something that leads to no result.

Shawn: The real question here is why we haven’t talked about what the clear endgame is for Nvidia, the thing that will turn it into the first $100 trillion company, Olaf the robot.

Anthony: How could I forget?

Kirsten: Anthony, go to the end of the two and a half hours to watch this.

So, Olaf the robot comes out, and that’s something Jensen loves to do. He loves getting these demos and some are better than others. It’s also to showcase Nvidia’s technology in robotics, and I don’t know if Olaf was actually talking in real time or if he was a programmer – he sounded a little bit like a programmer, or he had specific keywords that he used.

But the greatest part about it is that they had to cut off the mic at the end because he just started walking around and talking to the audience. Then he moved into his small corridor and was slowly lowered down. And you can see it on the video. He was still talking, but there was no microphone.

Shawn: Now we just need to give this little robot a wheelbase. And I know the perfect founder who can provide that.

I mean these demos are always ridiculous. I don’t want to talk about my platform, because I know we talked about this a little bit earlier this week, but this was an impressive demo up until the point where it fell a little flat.

This is another good example, though [how] Robotics is a really interesting engineering problem and a really interesting physics problem and a really interesting integration problem, and all of those things, but this was presented as a partnership with Disney, and it’s supposed to be the future of Disney parks and things like that: you’ll be able to walk around and see Olaf from “Frozen” and take pictures of it and everything.

But these efforts never take into account — or certainly don’t bring to the forefront of events like this — and all the other things you have to consider when you bring up such things. There’s a really good YouTuber, Defunctland, who made a really good video about this – four hours long, not very long – about the history of Disney trying to introduce these types of robots into their park, these automatons.

The engineering challenges are really interesting and it’s fun to see that history, but it always comes back to the same question: OK, but what happens when baby Olaf kicks? And then every other kid who sees Olaf getting kicked or knocked over has their entire trip to Disney ruined and the brand ruined?

There is a lot on the social side of this. And this sounds silly, but that’s kind of the question we ask about humanoid robots as well. There’s a lot of hype around all this other stuff and we don’t really hear a lot of talk about the really messy gray areas on the social side of these things, and also just integrating it into people’s lives. We only hear about the engineering challenges – which again, are really impressive.

Kirsten: I have a counterpoint and then we have to get to the next point [topic]. This creates jobs, because Olaf would have to have a human babysitter at Disneyland, maybe dressed as Elsa or something. You can imagine that what we are actually doing is creating jobs [with] This engineering experiment.