A lot of good companies start with a formidable founder (a Paul Graham expression), who then inspires others to join, and manages the growth of the product and company by attracting better and better people over time. Original co-founders often leave, and get replaced with more experienced ones, but the original founder stays as the company grows and becomes mature. Some of the best companies, however, start with founders who aren’t just accidental acquaintances, but are both or all great experts at very different things that bring synergy to one another.
Such is the story of Vitosha portfolio company ECEON. With its headquarters based in Germany, as well as R&D and sales offices in Bulgaria and California, its team members include nationalities from across Europe, US, Latin America, and Asia. ECEON was founded when Germany-based Florian Ernst and Bulgaria-based Krasimir Milchev reconnected years ago, when they found themselves attending the same accelerator program in Germany. They had known each other from before, when Florian used to visit Bulgaria often for his previous work projects, and very quickly decided to join forces to bring top-notch robotics automation to a very important industry: intralogistics.
Both Florian and Krasimir knew a lot about different parts of this newfound challenge. Florian had made a career with different automotive OEMs, where he worked as an automation and digitalization engineer for intralogistics processes, as well as one of the big international consultancy firms, followed by two successful startups in which he was a co-founder. Krasimir was the lead on robot-arm development at one of the big European players in the warehouse robotics field, who have a big R&D center in Bulgaria, and is a global-level expert on robotics.
In the age of ever-growing consumption as well as the exponential scaling of e-commerce and global logistics, Europe and the rest of the world are facing a dwindling supply of available workforce and real estate. It doesn’t require complicated math to see that in order to fulfill the demand for shopping and delivery, AI and robots are indispensable. That's exactly what ECEON is all about.
ECEON's next-generation autonomous mobile robots are based on a unique combination of innovative hardware and advanced artificial intelligence technologies that reduce material handling costs by up to 90% while increasing productivity by up to 300%.
ECEON’s mobile robots automate three core material handling processes: (1) Autonomous Truck Trailer Loading and Unloading (2) Picking Transport Automation, and (3) Point-to-Point Transport. Due to its flexible solutions, ECEON enables warehouse and factory operators to achieve a return on their investment of oftentimes less than 12 months with savings of up to 90 TEUR per robot per year.
ECEON’s portfolio includes three autonomous mobile robot models: (1) ECEON-500, (2) ECEON-1000, and the (3) ECEON-1500 with maximum payloads of 500 kg, 1,000 kg, and 1500 kg, respectively.
The ECEON 1500 is the first robot on the market that successfully combines all three critical material handling processes: by autonomously loading and unloading truck trailers with pallets, transporting autonomously alongside picking processes, and transporting materials autonomously from point to point within the warehouses or factories.
As part of ECEON’s current production capacity expansion in Germany and Bulgaria, its robots will be available even faster and on a larger scale across the EU and US by the end of this year. ECEON’s robots have been in use around the world and across industries such as Automotive, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Pharmaceuticals/Chemicals, E-commerce, and many more.
At Vitosha, we’re excited about this formidable team, which is chasing one of the biggest market opportunities and automation challenges of our time, combining the best of Silicon Valley innovation with European precision engineering experience. Keep an eye out for ECEON; these robots are (literally) going places, and carrying lots of good weight as they do.