80 million euros to finance robotics start-ups

It was one of the flagship measures of the government's robotics plan, presented a year ago in Lyon by Arnaud Montebourg: the first funds d'investissement European reserved for robotics was launched yesterday, in Bercy, by the Minister of Productive Recovery. Endowed with 80 million euros, Robolution Capital is financed equally by the public and the private sector. On the public side, the sums were provided by BPI France and by Europe, via the European Investment Fund. On the private side, the fund is managed by Orkos Capital, and it associates AG2R La Mondiale, Orange, EDF, Thales and individual shareholders, including the founder of Meetic, Marc Simoncini.

Robolution Capital intends to invest in most branches of robotics: companion, surveillance or surgical robots, but also robots for agriculture, drones or driverless vehicles. It targets companies already producing robots, but also designers of sensors or software, with tickets ranging from 300.000 euros to 5 million euros.

Announced almost two years ago, Robolution Capital was imagined by Bruno Bonnell, founding partner of this fund at Orkos Capital. The former president of Infogrames (and columnist for "Echos"), who chairs the French union of service robotics (Syrobo), is already a shareholder in two companies in the sector: Robopolis, distributor of robots for the general public and in particular vacuum cleaners of the iRobot brand, and Awabot, specialized in telepresence robots. According to Bruno Bonnell, the fund has already “a dozen files in sight, out of a total of 450 French and European companies”. It should announce its first investments before the summer.