Viam Launchpad offers six-month robotics startup program

Viam was founded in 2020 by Eliot Horowitz, who drew on his experience as co-founder and CTO of MongoDB to create a universal software abstraction layer for building and deploying hardware systems. The company describes itself as "The harness for physical AI." Since launching, the platform has enabled startups including Gambit, Tennibot, and Canyon Runner to launch and reach customers quickly.

The Viam Launchpad builds on that experience. As the advising executive director of the Launchpad, the author notes that the program's culmination is installation day, not demo day. Teams are immersed in Viam with usage credits, engineering support, and office space in New York City, and Viam operates one of the most robust robotics labs in the Northeast, complete with a robot arm farm.

The launch comes as automation investments this year have exceeded the past four years combined, surpassing $60 billion in just nine months, according to F-Prime's data presented at RoboBusiness. However, only $1.3 billion is being invested in software to speed up robotics deployment, a gap Viam aims to address. The overall market for enabling systems is projected to climb to over $23 billion by 2031, part of a larger $78 billion robotics software market.