Aldebaran Robotics (France) - Jan 2008

unquote
01 January 2008

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CDC Innovation has invested €5m in a series-A round of financing for Aldebaran Robotics. ISource Gestion also participated. The deal will be CDC’s first investment of its new fund Innovation III. The company was initially financed by founder Bruno Maisonnier, employees, business angels and family friends. Employees initially held an 8% stake before the financing round.

Company

Paris-based Aldebaran Robotics, was founded by Bruno Maisonnier in July 2005. The company develops 60cm tall humanoid home robot companions called NAO. The financing round will be used to expand the team and move the NAO robot from the prototype stage into production. Aldebaran Robotics hopes to have the NAO robot available to the mass market by 2009. An initial 40 robots have been sold and are expected to be distributed to laboratories and universities by the end of March. The robot is being developed by the company to meet the challenge of the RoboCup in 2050 which, in theory, should see a football match between robots and humans take place. The RoboCup Committee announced the NAO as the new standard platform league taking over from Sony’s Aibo. The platform is fully programmable and evolving. It has a target usage of education, entertainment, home care and security. Aldebaran Robotics has 25 employees.

People

Jean-Michel Deligny worked on the deal for Go4Venture, Bruno Maisonnier is the founder and CEO of Aldebaran Robotics, Valéry Huot was involved on behalf of CDC Innovation and Nicolas Landrin for I-Source Gestion.

Advisers

Equity - Chammas & Marcheteau, Denis Marcheteau, Géraldine Vignat (Legal)Equity - Ernst & Young, Emmanuel Picard (Financial Due Diligence)Equity - Marks & Clerk, Christian Nguyen (Other Due Diligence)Vendor - go4venture, Jean-Michel Deligny (Corporate Finance)Vendor - Kahn et Associés, Marie-Laure de Cordovez (Legal)

Sourced from: France unquote" 89 (Mar 2008)