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A year after its fundraising failure, Omnirobotic emerges from restructuring as a profitable robot builder
This time last year, the end was approaching for Omnirobotic. Technology market conditions were deteriorating and the venture-backed startup had failed to secure Series A financing. Even after laying off a third of its staff, the Laval, QC-based company was still running dangerously low on cash.
In an interview with BetaKit, Omnirobotic co-founder and CEO Francois Simard said it took three months to accept that he was not going to be able to raise new funding to fuel the company’s recurring revenue platform strategy and half a year for Omnirobotic to secure the buy-in required to restructure and reinvent itself as a maker of autonomous industrial robots.
While this pivot from an artificial intelligence (AI) software firm into a less scalable but more sustainable machine builder seemed like the best path forward for Omnirobotic, Simard acknowledged that it was still a gamble with no guarantee of paying off.