Insider Brief
- Canadian startup TetraGen Robotics raised C$1.8 million in an oversubscribed seed round to expand its AI-enabled autonomous welding systems across North American manufacturing.
- StepChange Capital led the round, with participation from Emend Vision Fund and Jim Richardson, while TetraGen plans to grow deployments and its engineering and commercial teams.
- TetraGen’s technology combines AI, 3D vision, autonomous path planning and industrial robotics to reduce programming and setup by automatically generating robot paths and adapting to part and production variations.
Canadian startup TetraGen Robotics has raised CAN$1.8 million in an oversubscribed seed round to grow its autonomous welding business. StepChange Capital led the financing, with participation from Emend Vision Fund and Winnipeg investor Jim Richardson, according to the company.
The Winnipeg-based company develops AI-enabled, vision-guided robots designed for general manufacturing and TetraGen indicated its systems are already being used in Canada. TetraGen plans to use the capital to expand deployments, strengthen its engineering and commercial teams and support manufacturers adopting its robotic welding systems.
TetraGen indicated its longer-term goal is to provide robotic welding systems that can handle changing products and production conditions with less programming and operator intervention, beginning with heavy equipment and expanding into other general-manufacturing markets.
“For decades, manufacturers have adapted their operations to fit the limitations of robotic automation,” co-founder and CEO Matt Khoshdarregi said in the announcement. “We believe the future is the opposite. Autonomous welding systems should adapt to manufacturers, not the other way around. Our mission is to make robotic welding intelligent enough that manufacturers can focus on building great products instead of constantly re-programming and troubleshooting robots.”
TetraGen’s Tech
TetraGen’s technology combines artificial intelligence, 3D vision, autonomous path planning and industrial robotics. The system identifies physical features of a part, generates robot programs, adjusts for dimensional differences between parts and changes its behavior as production conditions vary.
That approach is intended to reduce the manual programming and specialized setup traditionally required because conventional systems depend on precisely positioned parts and extensive programming, the company said. That can mean workers have to make additional adjustments when something changes in the process.
TetraGen said its welding cells are designed to reduce that work by automatically creating robot paths and adapting to variations in the parts being welded. The system is geared to manufacturers that need greater flexibility but may lack the technical staff needed to continually program and troubleshoot conventional robotic systems, TetraGen said.
The company is initially focusing on heavy-equipment manufacturing, with plans to expand into other industries where welding requirements change frequently and production flexibility is important.
