Vention Raises the Bar for Automating Automation with New Funding and Solutions
March 9, 2026
By Krystie Johnston
Vention accelerates democratization of automation with new funding and GRIIPTM, sets sites on Enterprise clients, reaches more industries and geographies
Vention is on a journey to democratize automation, and they are picking up speed. Already, in Q1 of 2026, they have made two announcements that will accelerate their trajectory towards automating automation: they have raised $100M USD ($150M CAD to accelerate physical AI deployment across global manufacturing, and they introduced GRIIPTM, a generalized physical AI pipeline for manufacturing automation. Their momentum is more than just exciting; it is ushering in a new era of manufacturing.
Too many automated systems today are built with disconnected hardware and software, requiring time and trial and error to get it to ‘work right’. Vention is changing this by building what they believe to be the world’s only AI-powered full stack software and hardware automation platform. Their Manufacturing Automation Platform (MAP) has been intentionally created to help companies automate right the first time, meticulously designed to automate the design, program, simulate and deploy aspects of any machine, then supercharged with artificial intelligence – on both the hardware and the software sides.
Etienne Lacroix, CEO and founder of Vention, says the hardware is the building blocks that make up a machine or robot cell (and they have worked with leading OEMs to develop a comprehensive supply of “blocks”), and the software designs, programs, simulates, and deploys it. Adding AI takes this to another level – progressing AI improves how the software and hardware interact.
“You add AI on top of that, and the deployment time, the programming time, gets even shorter. Which means physical AI will help more people automate more profitably. We are quite excited. We needed to add that layer across our stack,” Lacroix says. “There are really two areas we are focusing on: anything that is pre-purchase or pre-equipment, we have added AI in there, mostly generative AI to help with design and programming. And those products continue to evolve. But more recently, we have been focusing a lot on what is happening post-sales, or at the deployment time with physical AI. And GRIIP is one of the first products that shot off from there.”
Strong partnerships accelerate development
Vention’s recent collaboration with NVIDIA has focused on integrating NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing technologies into Vention’s platforms, advancing robotics and industrial automation exponentially. Together, they can support Enterprise clients, reaching more industries and geographies than ever. “A lot of our growth now – Vention started working with mid-market companies – but today, half of our business is enterprise-sized companies,” Lacroix says. “Those clients are demanding [our solutions]. Rightly so. And we are going to continue to build products to serve them.”
Enterprise companies present new challenges – and opportunities – that Vention is ready for. These global giants demand more sophisticated solutions, something Vention can provide and scale as needed to meet the demands of increasing automation. Lacroix says there are indicators that the market is moving towards rebuilding their industrial base – affected by some aspect of the geopolitical shifts that are driving reshoring and retooling. He says many companies in Canada, the US, and Europe need to retool, and do so at a pace that traditional automation cannot offer, which positions Vention as a clear winner when it comes to new machines or robot cells.
Solving the “Laptop Problem”
Vention is solving what they call the “Laptop Problem”. Picture a large manufacturing site or factory, with many machines integrated into a production line. The chances of each machine being integrated by the same provider, at the same time, using the same software, are pretty narrow. When that enterprise needs to make a change in production, modify a SKU or change a parameter, they need access or a license to the software that controls the machine – but they cannot access it because they do not have the laptop where those licenses exist. With Vention, it is different.
“Automation projects have traditionally been highly customized, which makes them difficult to scale across large organizations,” says Francois Giguere, CTO at Vention. “Vention provides a unified platform that standardizes how automation systems are designed and deployed. This allows Vention or integrators to deliver projects faster while giving enterprises a scalable foundation for automation.”
Vention is constantly working to improve their platform and the solutions they can offer their customers. GRIIPTM, their latest launch, is a practical solution that leverages the technologies that are available today to build a platform that will get users from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. Their generalized AI pipeline takes the best parts of an AI pipeline (performance and efficiency) and an end-to-end model (generalizable) to build an industrial intelligence that is ‘good enough’ to manage a variety of manufacturing tasks.
Going the distance
“Over the last year, with NVIDIA, we have been able to build something that is quite generalized, for a pipeline. We are not claiming it is the generalization that you have in an end-to-end model, but for an AI pipeline, it is quite generalized,” Lacroix says.
“What it means is, you can very rapidly inject the new parts through a CAD model, and because we use pre-trained or zero-shot learning models, the rest of the pipeline becomes automatically translated and the application works without having to do three to four weeks of data acquisitions or policy training on the factory floor.”
Lacroix says their pipeline has multiple steps. The first one being perception, which covers a wide variety of use cases, all perceived in 3D. The next is grasping, which covers the realities of a manufacturing environment. And finally, collision awareness motion planning. Assembling these building blocks into a pipeline to get something that is generalizable is something new, and it enables Vention to have scale when they deploy, meaning they do not have to spend two or three weeks with the client, training their pipeline to their use cases.
“GRIIP can be applied to multiple applications, deep out, machine tending, glue deposition, bin picking or deep bin picking, vision guided orientation. There are so many use cases that GRIP can now do because we have put all those building blocks into a single package. And with everything mentioned, we give a very simple user interface to our operator. It is ready to be out of the R&D lab and given in the hands of the operator on the manufacturing floor.”
More Information
Interested in learning more? Vention will be at NVIDIA GTC from March 16 to 19 and Automate from June 22- 25. See their solutions firsthand or visit them online. www.vention.com
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