Vention says its ‘Zero-Shot Automation’ allows AI and robotics to smoothly integrate for tasks such as bin picking. Source: Vention
At its sixth annual Demo Day, Vention announced “Zero-Shot Automation” capabilities that it said will allow companies to automate without the need for traditional hardware integration or complex planning. They include new tools that the company said will bring its platform to a global community of developers and roboticists.
Vention asserted that its advanced simulation and artificial intelligence features, plus modular hardware, will help manufacturers move from design to deployed automation faster than ever before.
“Our mission has always been to make automation accessible to everyone,” stated Etienne Lacroix, founder and CEO of Vention. “With Zero-Shot Automation, we’re building the stack of the future for industrial automation, where hardware and software are fully unified, and AI runs seamlessly from the cloud to the edge. It’s a major milestone toward simpler, smarter, and more powerful automation.”
With more than 25,000 machines deployed worldwide and over 4,000 factories, Vention said it enables businesses to design, program, deploy, and operate turnkey or custom automation in just days.
Since its first Demo Day in 2020, the company said it has transformed its fast machine-design platform into a software-defined automation environment. Vention added that it supports manufacturing applications such as palletizing, welding, and machine tending.
In addition, the Montreal-based company said it delivers proven performance, faster payback, and a shorter path from idea to production.
Tools help developers scale software-defined automation
“We hear folks talking about ‘software-defined automation,’ but the reality is, none of the hardware configurations are ever exposed to the cloud, so you still need to go on the hardware, the software, the application layer,” Lacroix told The Robot Report. “The configuration in today’s world is always edge-defined, and you you need to have a specialized system integrators that have a lot of knowledge that still need to go on the factory floor.”
Vention is using AI for perception, grasping, and manipulation while also considering collision-aware motion planning, added Francois Giguere, chief technology officer of Vention. By using foundation models from NVIDIA based on transformer architectures already trained with a lot of data, robots don’t need additional training to adapt to environmental conditions or account for things such as changes in lighting conditions.
“When you start to have true end-to-end, software-defined automation, where the configuration and the application can always be defined in the cloud, you have what I call ‘separation of duty,’” said Lacroix. “That means the folks sitting behind the computers have a certain skill set. They know how to program the robots. The folks going to install the machine on the factory floors are expert at doing that, but they don’t need to be expert roboticists, who are pretty scarce.”
“We’ve seen a theme of ‘zero-shot’ things, such as learning, manufacturing, and deployment,” he acknowledged. “For us, it’s a continuation of the post-PLC era, in which you don’t need an electrician for our plug-and-play motion controller. Integrators can design, program, and deploy automation with AI with speed and simplicity.”
Vention is also working on a machine specification and collaboration tool to help developers automate at scale after defining their requirements, explained Lacroix. The company continues to build market momentum.
“We actually had a pretty good year, which contrasts quite a bit from what we saw from other public companies in this space, which are facing headwinds,” he said. “While the market peak was in 2022, order deliveries have yet to recover. Despite that, we’ve been on a trajectory where we’ve gained share every single year as a result of building a unique hardware and software manufacturing platform.”
Vention says it can make applications such as palletizing easier to program. Source: Vention
Vention rolls out AI Operator
This year’s Demo Day included the global rollout of AI Operator, which Vention said brings advanced AI models directly to the factory floor for unstructured applications such as bin picking. First previewed at NVIDIA GTC 2025, AI Operator is now available, with factory-floor deployments expected to expand globally through early 2026.
AI Operator uses Vention’s MachineMotion controller, first introduced at Demo Day 2024. It is built on NVIDIA AI infrastructure and NVIDIA Isaac libraries and AI models to deliver the compute power required for advanced industrial AI applications.
“By enabling perception, grasping, and collision-free motion directly at the edge, it accelerates manufacturers’ path toward Zero-Shot Automation, making automation simpler, faster, and more intelligent,” said Vention. The company listed enhancements to its platform for manufacturers, developers, and roboticists:
- New Developer Toolkit opens platform in new ways: Vention has introduced a command-line interface (CLI), bundled project templates, and ready-to-use libraries for state machines, device communication, data storage, and operator interfaces. Developers and roboticists can now build locally or in the cloud using their preferred workflow, expanding how they create on the Vention platform.
- Simulation Checker offers easier access to tools: A new simulation environment delivers real-world accuracy before a single line of code is ever written, said the company. Gravity, collisions, and motion now behave exactly as they would on the factory floor, giving manufacturers confidence in their automation designs from Day 1, it said.
- RemoteView video recording ensures safe, smart operations: To strengthen Vention’s ability to help operators monitor and optimize machines, RemoteView logs a full operational history, including status updates and alerts. By helping teams trace issues such as operator errors or equipment collisions, RemoteView can accelerate troubleshooting and prevent costly downtime, it explained.
- Vention Projects streamlines automation planning and collaboration: “Built on the industry’s largest library of machine specifications, Vention Projects provides a structured, centralized workflow for defining automation scope and requirements,” the company claimed. “The new tool reduces manual documentation and communication gaps, helping teams align early and move projects from concept to approval with greater accuracy.”
“We’ve added other little things in MachineBuilder that are not AI-related, but came from clients,” said Lacroix. “Feedback is that a lot of those machines exist in brownfield facilities, and that means there are other machines for which we need interfaces. So we’ve added a little tool so people can add their factory layout to the drawings, basically inside MachineBuilder, so people can design in context. We added features while keeping the user interface quite simple.”
AI is making manufacturing more agile, say partners
Amit Goel, head of robotics and edge computing at NVIDIA, recently spoke at RoboBusiness 2025. He also joined Vention Demo Day to discuss the accelerating role of AI in agile manufacturing and the advances driving Vention’s AI Operator. Goel asserted that GPU-powered edge computing, as well as CUDA-accelerated libraries and AI models, are redefining how automated systems perceive, adapt, and operate in real time.
“With Vention’s AI Operator, it’s now possible to deploy robotics for applications that require continuous updates and greater flexibility,” he said. “All of these capabilities are now accessible to technicians on the line.”
“Eighteen months ago, we started developing MachineMotion AI,” recalled CTO Giguere. “When we started to design the new controller, we chose an NVIDIA computer to go inside.”
“As part of that, we started working closer with NVIDIA, which has developed an entire ecosystem of technology for robotics — good foundation models for depth estimation, simulation tools and workflows, as well as hardware like GPUs,” he told The Robot Report. “It’s not easy to integrate and deploy advanced motion planning, but they’ve really walked the path of deploying some of these applications. We’re using new AI capabilities to make the robots easier to program.”
Also at Demo Day, executives from Cripps & Sons Woodworking, McAlpine & Co., and Solestial Inc. shared the breakthroughs they have achieved with Vention, from faster design cycles to fully deployed robots delivering measurable impact on the factory floor. Watch Demo Day live on Oct. 29 at 11:00 a.m. ET, or on demand afterward.
