It’s a bit of a special day at Breega. We’re celebrating the successful $90m Series C fundraise of one of our earliest portfolio companies, Exotec.

In case you haven’t heard of them, Exotec launched in 2015 and are the leading producers of logistics solutions for E-commerce warehouses and the inventors of the illustrious Skypod, a 3 dimensional warehouse robot capable of moving at a speed of 4 m per second.

Amongst their better-known customers in their home country France, are big name retailers such as Carrefour and CDiscount. Whilst in Japan companies such as Uniqlo depend on Exotec’s robots to get their orders out on time.

The $90 million financing round announced today and led by 83North comes just two years after their $15 million Series B raise and marks a new step in their growth.

A growth which could be called exponential given that since their beginning both the Exotec team and their turnover have doubled year-on-year.

Flashback to the very beginning of the Exotec-Breega adventure 

It could be said that rather like their nifty Skypod robots, founders Romain Moulin and Renaud Heitz don’t like to hang around.

Looking back, Breega Founding-Partner and Exotec’s first VC investor (alongside 360 Capital), François Paulus, says that the founders have come a long way from the two eager young engineers he met back in 2016.

First, as jury member at the Telecom ParisTech incubator and then later, as a somewhat bemused spectator, watching the two demo-ing their first prototype of a two dimensional robot skirting at speed around the floors of the basement- level incubator dining hall.

Looking to raise 3 million, Romain and Renaud approached François for funding. Before taking that leap of faith and choosing to invest in the pre-seed company, François first made a few calls to background check the two young entrepreneurs.

He spoke to the CTO of General Electric Healthcare France. When hearing first-hand that the two were stars of GE’s France 100 person engineering team, and despite the company’s best efforts to keep them, they were determined to launch their own business, François decided that Breega should probably back them. And so we did. We’re glad to say that we haven’t looked back since!

Reaching for the Sky(pod)

Exotec is a growth story, but not only. It’s also a homage to two individuals with amazing vision and drive.

The kind of founders who turned their lives upside down, left Paris to set up their activities in a small town in Northern France and overcame the struggle of attracting talents in Croix by building a one-of-a-kind employer brand.

The kind of founders who, while their board is discussing next year’s growth forecast, are already mapping out in their minds what the next few years will look like, not just in terms of growth but also in terms of new technology and services.

The kind of founders who inspire both individuals and investors to follow them, to help make the dream happen.

And this is what we decided to do at Breega. Over the past four years we have worked with them, helping them to boost and build their team, backing them through three funding rounds and seeing them grow from strength-to-strength.

And just as we were there at the beginning, so we will be over the next few years, whilst accompanying them on their journey to become the international go-to company for logistics solutions. We can therefore say that in Exotec’s case, we’re certain that the Sky(pod) will not be the limit. 🙂