Montréal-based Vention has secured a $110-million USD ($150-million CAD) Series D round to enhance and scale its physical AI platform into manufacturing plants worldwide.
“We’re becoming the default standard, and we’re going to invest to ensure that’s the case.”
Etienne Lacroix
The industrial tech scaleup closed the new funding round and hit $100 million CAD in annual run rate in late December, CEO Etienne Lacroix told BetaKit in an interview on Monday. Investissement Québec—the Québec government’s investment arm—led the round, with participation from new investors chip giant Nvidia’s venture division, Desjardins Capital, and returning investor Fidelity Investments Canada.
The all-primary round, which consists largely of equity with a small credit facility, brings Vention’s total amount raised to more than $300 million CAD. Lacroix said the company plans to use the capital to accelerate its physical AI research, which applies machine learning and AI to how machines and robots navigate the physical world. It will also add new features to its software and expand its operations in Europe, where it already has a significant presence through its German offices.
“We’re becoming the default standard, and we’re going to invest to ensure that’s the case,” Lacroix said.
Founded in 2016 by Lacroix and CTO Max Windisch, Vention offers a self-serve platform of engineering software and plug-and-play hardware to help manufacturing professionals design, order, and deploy automated equipment. Lacroix described it as an “Apple-like ecosystem,” where manufacturers can order custom industrial parts that are looped into the software system.
With generative AI, Vention clients can design a robot fleet with no coding required, and order the entire automated robot workstation and associated hardware. The physical AI allows companies to control their robots’ perception and motion planning.
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Vention has roughly 330 employees and its physical AI platform is deployed in more than 4,000 factories worldwide—including companies like Boeing, L’Oreal, and Lockheed Martin. Lacroix said that 70 percent of its customers are in the US, 20 percent in Europe, and 10 percent in Canada.
Industrial automation has been slow to catch on in Canada, particularly among small businesses. Just 8.4 percent of manufacturing companies in 2022 had adopted robotics technology, according to Statistics Canada. Those that did integrate robotics had higher productivity rates and accounted for a larger share of employment and revenue in the economy.
Still, a number of Canadian tech companies are working on AI software to guide machine movement. Toronto startup Waabi is developing a physical AI platform to guide driverless trucks, and Toronto’s Xaba sells a software platform to program industrial robots.
Feature image courtesy Vention.