Sudbury, Ontario’s Symx.ai got its start nearly two decades ago as a technology startup called Symboticware that aimed to solve data communication challenges in the mining industry.
The company spent nearly 13 years building specialized hardware to pull, standardize, and transmit data from underground trucks at mines and establishing itself with mining clients, creating a small-but-successful business funded by its own revenue and government grants.
“A lot of companies talk about industrial AI. Very few of them have their technology running on real sites, under real conditions, day after day.”
But during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the then six-person startup identified a much larger opportunity to become “a full-stack industrial AI platform for mobile equipment,” and set out to transform accordingly.
Since then, Symboticware has rebranded to Symx.ai, recruited a new CEO in Ash Agarwal, completed a key acquisition, and closed multiple rounds of equity financing to fuel those plans.
Today, the now 40-person firm announced $6 million USD ($8.4 million CAD) in Series A funding from Dallas-based Ascent Capital Partners and a new global tech and commercial partnership with India’s Yokohama Off-Highway Tires to white-label and resell Symx.ai’s tech to the major tire manufacturer’s clients.
In an exclusive interview with BetaKit, Agarwal said that agreement will help Symx.ai bring its offering to approximately 45 new sites in less than a year, far faster and more efficiently than the startup would have been able to achieve on its own. For context, at the moment, Symx.ai’s tech is deployed at 24 sites across 14 countries.
Symx.ai’s all-equity, all-primary capital Series A round closed in May. It brings the firm’s total equity funding to $8 million USD ($11.2 million CAD); Symx.ai has also secured approximately $6.2 million CAD in non-dilutive financing from the Canadian and Ontario governments. Agarwal did not share what valuation the latest round gave Symx.ai.
“We’ve known Ash and the team for about three years now, and we’ve watched them build something that actually works in some of the toughest industrial environments out there,” Ascent co-founder and managing partner Jonathan Loeffler told BetaKit over email. “A lot of companies talk about industrial AI. Very few of them have their technology running on real sites, under real conditions, day after day. Symx.ai does.”
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While Ascent was attracted to the Symx.ai team’s technical depth, industry knowledge, and customer loyalty, Loeffler said, “what really convinced us was how they handled the hard stretches.” He has joined the startup’s board as part of the round.
Symx.ai was launched in 2008 by mining industry veteran and former CEO Kirk Petroski, who now serves as the company’s chair. The startup built a box designed to unlock data from underground trucks and basic analytics software to help clients grasp the health of their machines.
Agarwal said Symx.ai focused primarily on selling this box until COVID-19 hit. He became CEO in the summer of 2020 with the idea that the company could “do dramatically more than just selling boxes.”
Agarwal said pandemic restrictions around this time, which limited the firm’s ability to visit sites and install its hardware, created challenges for Symx.ai, a name it officially adopted in 2024 to reflect its evolving focus. “It was a crisis moment for us,” he said. “We wanted to do something different.”
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“The value was not in unlocking data—the value was in … [deriving] insights that can help the truck operators get more out of the truck,” Agarwal said.
This led the company to start pulling together the more advanced AI software platform it also offers today, which helps clients spot developing maintenance issues and operational efficiencies, and avoid costly unscheduled downtime.
Symx.ai closed its first equity financing in 2021 to begin executing on that vision when it secured $2.8 million CAD in seed funding from GreenSky Ventures, MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, Celtic House Asia Partners, Axion, and others. The following year, Symx.ai acquired Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator alumnus Palifer, which had been developing industrial natural language processing software.
“We are building a durable, sustainable, profitable business.”
Agarwal said Symx.ai’s goal entails “building an operating system for [heavy] industry,” from mining to construction, cement, and processing sectors to monitor the health of trucks, excavators, loaders, dozers, drill rigs, graders, and other equipment.
Ascent believes the market for Symx.ai is “wide open,” adding that demand is growing, and many of these industries still lack tools built for how they operate.
With its platform now battle-tested in the field over the past several years, Loeffler said it is now time for growth. He said that Yokohama’s decision to partner with Symx.ai speaks to the strength of the startup’s tech and opens doors for the company in new regions and segments.
Agarwal declined to share Symx.ai’s current revenue but claimed the company has doubled its sales year-over-year in 2026 and expects to do the same in 2027. The CEO said Symx.ai is close to breakeven, expects to begin turning a profit next year, and does not intend to grow the size of its team substantially from here.
“We are building a durable, sustainable, profitable business,” the CEO added.
Feature image courtesy Symx.ai