Vention is an industrial automation company that provides a cloud-based platform for designing, simulating, deploying, and operating custom automation and robotic systems, making automation faster, more accessible, and easier to scale.
Vention has grown significantly since its founding in 2016. Could you take us back to the company's origins and explain the vision that has shaped its evolution?
I joined Vention in early 2017, just a few months after the company was founded. From the beginning, the vision was to make industrial automation faster, simpler, and easier to deploy. We wanted customers to be able to design a machine online, program it, simulate it, and validate that it would perform as expected before investing in hardware. That approach reduces rework, accelerates deployment, and makes automation much more accessible.
The platform has evolved significantly since then. We started with simple mechanical structures before expanding into robotics, automation, increasingly sophisticated systems, and now Physical AI. Today we're delivering complex packaging lines, conveyor systems, and multi-robot applications, but we've remained focused on the same core principles of speed, replicability, and ease of use.
A key part of your platform is the ability to design, simulate, and validate machines before deployment. How important is that in helping customers bridge the gap between pilot projects and real-world implementation?
It's fundamental. We refer to this as the virtual factory. Today, every automation provider performs physical factory acceptance testing before shipping a machine. Our long-term vision is to virtualize that entire process so machines can be validated through simulation with such accuracy that much of the physical testing becomes unnecessary.
Physical AI has progressed more slowly than software because it has to deal with real-world hardware—robots, motors, sensors, and mechanical systems. To scale automation the way software has scaled, we believe machines themselves need to become virtual first. That's the direction we're pushing the platform.
Many automation providers focus primarily on large manufacturers. Why has Vention been able to successfully serve small and medium-sized businesses as well?
The efficiency of our platform changes the economics. Traditional automation often requires highly customized engineering, making smaller projects difficult to justify. Because our platform streamlines design and deployment, serving twenty-five customers with two machines each is just as attractive as selling fifty machines to a single large enterprise.
In fact, small and medium-sized manufacturers were our original customer base and remain an important part of our business today. They benefit from the same speed and simplicity as enterprise-level companies gaining access to automation that would otherwise be too expensive or too complex to implement.
Reshoring has become a major topic across North America. Where does Vention fit into that movement?
As more manufacturing returns to North America, automation becomes increasingly important because labor shortages remain a major constraint. Many facilities simply cannot hire enough people to support growing production, particularly outside major urban centers.
Our focus is providing affordable, accessible automation rather than the most complex, high-speed manufacturing systems. We see enormous opportunity in helping manufacturers automate the many repetitive processes that have traditionally relied on manual labor, making reshoring more economically viable.
Where are you seeing the strongest demand today, and what do you believe sets Vention apart in the market?
Approximately three-quarters of our business comes from North America, with Europe representing another meaningful portion of our customer base. Regardless of geography, companies typically come to us because we help them move from an operational challenge to a practical automation solution much faster than traditional approaches while lowering the total cost of ownership.
Many customers know they need automation but don't know what that solution should look like. During an initial conversation, we can begin designing, programming, and simulating a system directly in the browser, giving them a clear path forward almost immediately. Over time, those initial projects often grow into long-term automation partnerships spanning multiple applications and facilities.
You've recently partnered with companies such as Universal Robots and FANUC. How do these partnerships support Vention's broader strategy, and why do you see collaboration as a competitive advantage?
Our expertise is building complete automation applications by combining robotics, software, mechanical systems, and simulation into an integrated solution. Companies such as Universal Robots and FANUC build outstanding robots, while we provide the platform that turns those robots into complete production systems.
The partnership is highly complementary. Customers don't buy a robot by itself—they want to understand how the entire application will perform. By integrating our software with our partners' robotics platforms, customers can visualize the complete solution, evaluate cycle times, and better understand how the system will operate before making an investment.
You've spoken about a hybrid approach to physical AI. Why do you believe that's more practical than relying on a single AI model for an entire manufacturing process?
Many people are trying to solve entire manufacturing workflows with a single AI model, but I think that's unnecessarily difficult. A more effective strategy is to apply AI where it creates the most value while allowing proven automation technologies to handle everything else.
It's similar to the early evolution of electric vehicles. Hybrid systems provided practical value until battery technology matured. I believe physical AI will follow a similar path, with hybrid deployments delivering the best results before fully autonomous systems become practical across every application.
As manufacturers increasingly deploy AI, what do you see as the biggest bottleneck to scaling adoption?
For robotics, the biggest challenge isn't compute—it's systems integration. Most robotic systems already include the local computing resources they need because manufacturers can't depend on internet connectivity for production environments. If the network goes down, the factory can't stop.
The real challenge is integrating robotics, software, and operational processes into reliable production systems. That's where manufacturers continue to need the most support, and where we believe Vention delivers the greatest value.
What are your priorities for the next 12 months, and what’s Vention’s longer term ambition?
Our ambition is to become the leading platform for deploying physical AI at scale. We already bring together robotics, motion control, simulation, digital twins, and mechanical systems. Our role isn't to build the underlying AI models but to provide the platform that allows those technologies to be deployed reliably across factories.
At the same time, we're focused on making automation itself increasingly autonomous.
Today users can design, program, and simulate machines efficiently. Tomorrow they'll be able to accomplish much of that simply by interacting with AI agents. We see the industry moving from hardware-defined automation, through software-defined automation, toward AI-defined automation, and we intend to lead that transition.
