Anoop Gadhrri was only hoping for an unpaid opportunity when he reached out to Reiner Schmidt in the Summer of 2019. Joined by Sohaib Al-Emara, the engineers from McMaster University started working on robotics kits, unaware they were about to start a company that would break into show business.
After years of crowdfunding, bootstrapping, and contracting their way to clients like Netflix and Apple, the trio of Axibo co-founders have secured $12 million to launch a humanoid robotics division in a return to their original passion.
“We would’ve found a way [to pursue robotics], regardless. I think the capital is just going to help us move much faster.”
Anoop Gadhrri
The all-equity round was led by an undisclosed United States (US)-based strategic angel investor who provided $7.5 million USD ($10.4 million CAD) with participation from ex-Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan. There was also a $1 million CAD injection from the founders themselves. The round values Cambridge, Ont.-based Axibo at $30 million USD ($41.5 million CAD), CEO Gadhrri told BetaKit in an interview.
Gadhrri said about 70 percent of the funding will be used to increase Axibo’s headcount from eight to nearly 30 employees as the company looks to add more engineers and robotics experts to its staff. Axibo plans to move from its current 5,000 sq.ft office in Cambridge to help with its hiring goals, and will open a 10,000 to 15,000 sq. ft space closer to the University of Waterloo.
“[That’s] where the talent is,” Gadhrri said. “There’s a lot of talented engineers in robotics at Waterloo University.”
Gadhrri wants to build the robots in Canada. To that end, the rest of the capital is to be used on the manufacturing and equipment needed to fabricate Axibo’s prototype automatons. The first model is slated to debut next year.
Crowdfunding to Production
The team originally launched Axibo to make an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered camera mount assistant that would capture stable, automated tracking shots of the founders building robotics for tutorial videos, Gadhrri said.
“We were like, ‘well, this robot might be more commercializable than the robot we were thinking about commercializing.’” Gadhrri said.
Axibo ended up raising just under $100,000 CAD in a crowdfunding campaign for the device on Kickstarter, which had an original target of $40,000. Despite the hefty raise, Gadhrri recalled how the team lost money on every unit shipped because “we didn’t know what we were doing with the product costs,” and instead stayed buoyant on cash flow from “random contracts” they were doing on the side.
“We didn’t really know what the world of capital raising was like, and we didn’t even try,” Gadhrri said. “We just said ‘we know we can make money with our skill sets, so let’s do that.’”
The team started investing the capital it had collected doing the contract work back into Axibo in 2021, and went on to develop a virtual production feature for Axibo. Through an Unreal Engine plugin and its own system, Axibo allows anyone with its device, an LED TV, and a computer to sync the virtual and physical cameras to create a consumer-level version of Disney’s The Volume virtual soundstage.
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Best known for its use in The Mandalorian, The Volume combines a physical set with a pre-rendered digital backdrop. Instead of travelling to the Arctic or creating a large set for a scene, a filmmaker could use the technology to create a pre-rendered backdrop with minimal physical set dressing.
Axibo’s roots as a contractor came in handy when its technology was adopted by the likes of Netflix and Apple, according to Gadhrri, because the team could quickly make studio-requested iterations and changes. Though Gadhrri said he wasn’t at liberty to disclose what projects the tech was used on, he said it was “movies that you have definitely seen.”
Axibo’s website links to a LinkedIn post from Netflix virtual effect company Eyeline Studios, which showcases the use of its volumetric capture technology in the 2023 film Aquaman 2: The Lost Kingdom.
Back to Robots
As Axibo significantly expands its scope past cinema tech, going back to the founders’ original passion of general purpose robotics was always in the cards even if they didn’t find an external backer, Gadhrri said while pointing to the team’s bootstrapping experience.
“We would’ve found a way [to pursue robotics], regardless. I think the capital is just going to help us move much faster,” Gadhrri said. “We don’t have to spend another few years saving capital ourselves for this thing that we want to do. We just chopped off two years’ time.”
The CEO had a broad vision of Axibo’s robots taking on many different kinds of human manual labour around the world. Farming is closer to Gadhrri’s heart because he grew up on a farm and believes farmers could use robotic support. He also believes robots could support aging populations in elder care homes.
Axibo isn’t the first Canadian company in the race to develop humanoid robots; it’s contending with the likes of Vancouver’s Sanctuary AI. Sanctuary is well capitalized, having secured more than $140 million to date, and recently integrated new tactile sensor technology into its Phoenix line of robots to help pilots teleoperate the units with more precision and accuracy.
However, Gadhrri said he doesn’t view Sanctuary or any other Canadian firm as competition. Rather, he sees China as the competition.
“The number of good humanoid robotics companies in China to non-Chinese companies is a very high imbalance,” Gadhrri claimed. “We’re talking about, potentially, one of the most important technologies for the future. So that is competition.”
He added that a growing number of robotic companies in Canada, along with a deeper domestic supply chain, will only be beneficial to everybody. Gadhrri emphasized that Axibo is looking for young people that align with his mission to build in Canada, which he views as a way to give back to the country that welcomed him, an Indian immigrant.
“Canada gave me a lot. Gave my family a lot,” Gadhrri said. “I do feel like I owe Canada a lot.”
Feature image courtesy Axibo.