Inbolt, a French provider of real-time robot guidance solutions, has announced plans to bolster its workforce to support the company’s expansion into the USA and Japan, after raising €15m in series A funding.
The round was led by Exor Ventures, the early-stage investment arm of Exor, the largest shareholder of industrial groups such as Ferrari, Stellantis, and CNH industrial, and supported by French public sector investment bank Bpifrance and entrepreneur Yaan Fleureau, founder of Cardiologs, which is part of electronics company Philips.
Existing investors MIG Capital from Germany, SOSV from the USA, and BNP Paribas Développement from France, are also investing in the round, taking the total raised by the company to €20m.
With offices in France and Germany, and more than 20 factories deployed across Europe and the USA, Inbolt said it will use the new funding to meet growing demand from new regions, accelerate product development to expand use cases, and grow its team.
Rudy Cohen, CEO of Inbolt, said: “With a 400% increase in demand over the past six months from various regions, it is strategic for us to strengthen our presence in Europe while accelerating our expansion into the USA and Japan.
“Our collaboration with Exor Ventures and our existing investors will allow us to leverage their expertise and connections with major industrial companies to accelerate our product development and expand our geographic footprint.”
Headquartered in Paris, Inbolt’s GuideNOW real-time robotic guidance solution uses a 3D vision system boosted by artificial intelligence to improve production line efficiency and precision.
The startup’s technology enables the guidance of industrial robotic arms and is claimed to be 100 times faster than its competitors, enabling robots to adapt to various industrial environments across different industries, including automotive, electronics, and logistics.
GuideNOW processes 3D data to determine a part’s position and orientation, thereby enabling real-time robot trajectory adaptation.
“Until now, manufacturers have had to choose between ROI and deployment velocity of automation solutions,” said Noam Ohana, managing director at Exor.
“The ingenuity of Inbolt’s platform is to leverage 3D cameras and AI to give eyes and brains to robotic arms that were previously complex to manipulate.
“This solution has two massive advantages: it can be deployed in a matter of hours and at a much lower cost and used even by less tech-savvy operators.”
Inbolt’s technology is currently used at industrial sites in France, Italy, Poland, Hungary and the USA by the likes of Ford, Whirlpool, Thyssenkrupp Automotive, Atlas Copco and Stellantis, the latter of which reportedly saved more than €3.1m in one year through use of GuideNOW.
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