Why we invested in Formant
GS Futures participated in the Series A1 financing of Formant, the world’s leading data and operations platform for robots. We believe Formant is addressing one of the least-discussed, yet most critical aspects of long-term robot deployment in business settings.
Formant is a developer of a data platform offering monitoring and operations infrastructure for fleets of robots. The company’s platform is built on a secure and scalable cloud stack that can integrate robotic applications and existing tools, as well as help to operate, observe, and analyze robots anywhere in the world. This “back office infrastructure” enables easy deployment, scale, and management of mixed fleets. A video overview of Formant can be found here.
We are particularly impressed by Formant’s fit with both robotics companies (i.e. Canvas) and enterprise clients (i.e. BP).
Application at Robotics Companies
Many of the leading robotics companies today are venture-backed startups. These robotics companies take cost-efficient hardware combined with thoughtful operational software to execute discrete and valuable tasks. However, these entrepreneurs do not have significant capital to pursue all facets of robot operations with equal scale and pace. The cost of capital to develop novel operations software vs. incremental improvement to tele-operations and video lag risks is the same. Formant offers these entrepreneurs a best-in-class fleet management product that scales with the company’s growth, allowing these entrepreneurs to concentrate on core software development to solve client challenges.
This same conundrum exists for robotics companies at scale. Robotics integrators and service delivery companies must manage dozens of moving parts between hardware, client adoption curve, etc. Formant offers a reliable, accurate, and scalable data infrastructure to support these integrators.
Application at Enterprise Clients
Large corporates are likely the future owners of fleets of robots. These companies are acutely facing labor constraints and equally have the capital to make significant hardware purchases (or enter into long-term RaaS contracts). It is our belief that large corporates will likely operate a mixed fleet of robots (i.e. not all hardware is from a single supplier). This mix of OEM suppliers is status quo for both hand tools and heavy equipment in the construction, mining, and building maintenance sectors today; we believe it will be no different as robots are deployed more widely.
One limitation large corporates are likely to face is a limited number of talented roboticists working to manage this fleet. Formant offers a powerful tool to centralize a significant amount of robot operations. This ability to scale robot operations centrally is a lynchpin to success deployments, consistent operations, and well-managed software patching.
Most of all, we admire the professionalism and partnership of the Formant team. The company has built a culture of trust and progress that is critical to success. We are proud to support Formant and look forward to working together for years to come.
We are thrilled to join the lead investor, BMW iVentures, and co-investor Intel as new participants in this Series A1. We are equally honored to partner with SignalFire and additional strategic investors whom participated in this round as well. Please see articles in TechCrunch and Robotics 24/7 for additional information.
