Omnirobotic receives $500k investment

LAVAL — Omnirobotic, a robotics automation company, announced that it has closed a financing of $500k to commercialize Autonomous Robotic Machines driven by Omnirobotic’s proprietary platform, AutonomyOS™. Strategic investors led the round with participation from Genik and Exelpro management and the company’s current employees. This funding will enable Omnirobotic to expand its Autonomous Robotic Machines product line-up to serve better Manufacturers struggling with labor shortages in High-Mix production environments.

Since 2016, Omnirobotic’s co-founders, Francois Simard, and Laurier Roy, have worked on developing AutonomyOS™, a platform to train robots to perform manufacturing processes on newer parts. Up to 2022, AutonomyOS™ was licensed to users having built their autonomous machines using this platform. In 2023, the company changed its business model to become a machine builder, selling robotic equipment built on AutonomyOS™. This transformation resulted in the restructuring of the company in June 2023. Investissement Québec, as a representative of the government of Québec supported Omnirobotic in this transition, restructuring the company’s debt, while existing strategic investors, the management, and all the remaining employees injected new liquidities.

“Building autonomous machines allows Omnirobotic to address the need for skilled labor at scale. This model has proven to be much more effective at deploying AutonomyOS™ at scale,” said Omnirobotic CEO & Founder Francois Simard. “We sold in 6 months more machines than forecast for a year. Manufacturers want to buy proven solutions, not automation projects. Developing standard machines that they can try before they buy proved to be the right approach to getting SMEs to adopt new automation technology.”

“Genik is serving some companies using Autonomy™. We see the future of automation in this kind of technology, which is why we decided to re-invest in Omnirobotic,” said Patrick Gariépy, co-founder and president of Genik Automation. “We are training some of our engineers on using AutonomyOS™ and are using it to maintain Genik as an
automation leader.”

“The new products developed by Omnirobotic using AutonomyOS™ are addressing well-identified skilled labor shortage in the industry. We plan to widen our product line in the metal transformation and composite sectors in the near future. Our autonomous sanding robots are already disrupting the cabinet manufacturing industry by allowing companies counting as few as six people to automate one of the hardest tasks in their shop successfully. That is why we recently moved to a new 6500 square feet facility that will allow us to build up to 180 machines yearly,” added M. Simard.