RobCo CEO Roman Hölzl Talks $1 Billion Unicorn Valuation

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Tom Mackenzie (0:07)

There is a winner that's emerged in the physical AI field. It's getting increasingly competitive. It's worth noting, German robotics startup RobCo has become a unicorn. The company has surpassed a $1 billion valuation as it builds the next generation of autonomous industrial robotics, doubling its valuation in nine months. With us now is Roman Hölzl, co-founder and CEO of RobCo. I think you're making this announcement, you're revealing this today. So this is news on RobCo. Thank you for joining us around the desk. In this environment, then, of higher capital costs, higher cost of capital, you work with the big industrial partners, you work the likes of BMW.

You've just done a second resale, you're getting liquidity back to initial shareholders and employees. What is that cost of capital, that higher cost of capital doing to a business like yours and the kind of relationships you have with big industrial giants in Europe?

Roman Hölzl (0:56)

Yeah, good morning, Tom, and thanks for having me. I think before we get to that, the key thing for us at RobCo is to automate the ordinary so humans can do the extraordinary. And that macro trend is so strong, that higher cost of capital for now, I think is not a major concern for any of our customers or for us.

Two thoughts, though. Number one is we offer a robot as a service package, so we pre-finance the whole robot solution and deployment, and that, of course, is very attractive when it comes to the comparison to high capex costs upfront. And then secondly, we are a venture-backed company, not profitable, so we do depend on lower cost of capital for attractive valuations, but I think that's going to continue for the foreseeable future, at least.

Tom Mackenzie (1:32)

Where is most of that demand coming for right now? I mentioned it is an increasingly competitive space, and Europe clearly has skin in the game when it comes to robotics. We think about the competitive threat from China, of course, but Europe does have some names coming to the fore.

Where does your product fit? What solutions are you offering? And how much demand are you seeing right now? What is the traction right now?

Roman Hölzl (1:52)

Yeah, and you've lived in China yourself for four years, so for us, it's the opposite. We are focused on the European and the US markets. We strive to build a dominating player, in fact, for AI robotics for manufacturing in the US and Europe. What we're doing is effectively sell work, but done by robots, not done by humans. So we're active in the data center space, in the defense industries, automotive, aerospace, many others. We have a platform that works for all of these industries, as long as there's repetitive, manual human tasks involved that we can take on in a robotic, automated way.

Guy Johnson (2:20)

And Roman, good morning to you. So your system that you introduce, as you say, is modular. I've heard you describe it as kind of Lego-like, because it can be sort of put together like Lego, depending on the client's needs. One thing that's missing is sort of legs and arms and faces. There's a lot of frenzy about humanoid robots in some parts of the world, but yours are not that.

Is that over-engineering for actually what a lot of small, medium-sized businesses might need right now?

Roman Hölzl (2:45)

Yeah, the focus for us is autonomous industrial robots, right, industrial applications. And so for that, we need high robustness, a fast payback, and very, very strong technical feasibility for these types of tasks. And we've tailor-made the platform both in terms of the hardware modularity that you mentioned, and then the strong software platform, they have these solutions deployed fast, and to keep up with the changes that ever occur on the shop floor. And so for us, we think the right form factor isn't necessarily a humanoid form factor. It can be static, it can be a human torso, it can be just a robot arm that fits for that specific task, and that's what we do. We basically have a modular platform that is essentially tailor made for these tasks in the industrial setting.

Guy Johnson (3:23)

So you're a manufacturing company, but you sell robots as a service. So you're part of a sort of a service-sization of the manufacturing base. I mean, what does the pricing model look like then, when you sell robots as a service?

Roman Hölzl (3:39)

That's right.

The whole idea for us is at RobCo to make it as easy as possible for customers to start. And so if you think about the current applications, there's a shift or two or three done by human labor, loading machines, unloading machines, packaging, palletizing and so on. And so many of these customers can fill the night shift, can fill the weekend work. And that's where we come in and effectively position the RobCo solution as close as possible to actual human work. And so that comes with a monthly pricing versus six and seven figures of upfront investment capex cost. And that's what drives this and makes it much, much easier to get started in the first place.