Bpifrance Large Venture
Why did we invest (WDWI) in Exotec, the first French Industrial Unicorn 🦄
By Paul-François Fournier and Arnaud Helle
Exotec recently became the first French industrial unicorn (and won’t be the last!) and the investment team of Large Venture, Bpifrance’s Growth Fund, is particularly proud to back it ! Let’s see why we think this $335M round is only a first step for this leader in global warehouse robotics, born-and-raised in the north of France.
Yes, warehouse automation is a disputed market…
Industrial automation is nothing new. Both supply chain optimization and warehouse management are topics entrepreneurs have been tackling for a long time. For instance, Dematic was born in Germany in 1819, Swisslog in 1900, Knapp in the 50s, TGW in the 60s… Over the decades, all those legacy and large industrial players invested a lot in this market and have successfully taken the turn to automation. But definitely not through robotization.
More recently, with the rise of e-commerce, a new generation of robotic technologies for the warehouse emerged. Remember Kiva Systems bought by Amazon in 2013 for $775 million? It was definitely a Big Bang in the industry, especially when Amazon suddenly took the technology off the market to keep it for itself. It showed everyone that robotization is a key competitive advantage to optimize logistics.
Naturally, following Amazon’s move, several startups and entrepreneurs worldwide started to fill the gap and about a dozen startups in the field raised more than 100m$ ever since. In 2015, convinced by the market opportunity and the added value they could bring, Romain Moulin and Renaud Heitz founded Exotec.
… but Exotec brings a differentiating and extremely innovative value proposition…
Most automated solutions in the market currently require heavy investments, long-term planning and are not scalable. That’s where Exotec makes a difference. How? Thanks to its signature solution : The Skypod system.The Skypod system utilizes light robots, with a carrying capacity of 30kg, that can move in 3D and reach a height of 36 feet (12 meters) to enable high-density inventory storage.
Most importantly, Exotec systems are fully modular, allowing customers to deploy in a matter of months instead of years for industrial competitors (18+ months) and easily expand their systems without interrupting production by simply adding robots, stations, or racks as they need them to support their growth.
… through its unique hardware and software expertise…
What makes this achievement even more remarkable is the fact that the startup is mastering both the hardware and the software sides. All the elements of Exotec’s systems are indeed coordinated by the company’s main and proprietary software, Astar, whose mission is to assemble the orders at the fastest speed with the least amount of resources.
Astar leverages all at the same time spatial recognition, traffic optimisation, optimal control theory, robot localisation or mission sequencing technologies and Exotec has already demonstrated the performance of its systems by effectively operating several hundred robots simultaneously.
To achieve such an operational excellence, Exotec relies on a highly-qualified team of more than 300 persons, who allow the company to constantly innovate. Recently, Exotec debuted its Skypicker technology, an articulated arm able to move 600 items per hour! Exotec plans to hire 500 new R&D engineers by 2025.
…and an exceptional and visionary team…
What also convinced us to follow Romain, Renaud and their team in this adventure is how people-centric the company they are building is. They managed to keep that specificity even while experiencing hyper-growth and extending their footprint in North America, Japan and European Markets. All of these while being truly attached to their roots, in Lille, a dynamic and historical cluster for e-commerce and retail companies in France.
Some may say that Exotec solutions — and automation in general — are destroying jobs. The truth is Exotec systems are mostly replacing jobs that are repetitive, physically intense and sometimes even dangerous — hence recurrent recruitment issues in the industry — while creating new and more secure ones. Warehouses don’t need to be 100% automated and robots won’t replace humans, instead they will enable them to focus on higher value tasks.
…that have already won prestigious customers worldwide.
The flexibility and productivity gains permitted by Exotec, while meeting the highest performance level, have already convinced 30+ large clients, spanning e-commerce, grocery, retail, manufacturing, and 3PL sectors.
With thousands of Skypod robots already produced, the technology created by Exotec is now deployed in 10 countries and 50+ sites, and used by industry-leading brands including Decathlon, Carrefour, Gap, Geodis or Uniqlo.
What’s next?
The pandemic illustrated how critical supply chain operations are to our daily life. Inventory delays, labor shortages, port congestion and other supply chain disruptions are here to stay. At the same time, end consumers are demanding more responsiveness and efficiency from brands and retailers. All those trends are making the Exotec value proposition more relevant every day.
On the financial side, Exotec doubled its revenue and tripled its customer base since closing its $90M Series C funding round in the fall of 2020 and the company aims to maintain the same levels of growth to reach more than $1Bn revenues by 2025. 🚀
We are convinced it’s only the start of a bigger success story. With the accelerated internationalization of the company’s activities and its ability to constantly innovate, we truly believe that Exotec will become a market leader in warehouse robotics, capable of meeting all the needs related to intralogistics and that’s why we decided to invest !
