Funen-based robotics company was born at SDU
Denmark's fastest growing robotics company, Mobile Industrial Robots, has been sold. The company has been bought by American Teradyne who is paying close to 1.7 billion DKK. Five years ago, SDU RoboLab was the birthplace of the company.
Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) have experienced an explosive growth and recently released an account that broke all frameworks. It all culminated on Wednesday when the company was bought by American Teradyne, who in 2015 also bought another Funen-based robotics company, Universal Robots, at 1.9 billion DKK. It was obviously a happy and proud director, Thomas Visti, who could break the news on Wednesday.
"Becoming a part of Teradyne enables us to give more value to our customers and to manifest our position as a market leader in autonomous industrial robots.
Both MiR and Universal Robots originate in the creative and fertile robot environment in Odense including companies, the municipality and SDU Odense. In fact, the first prototype of the groundbreaking MiR100 robot was built by MiR founder, Niels Jul Jacobsen, at SDU's RoboLab. By the way, in a humble office space, adjacent to another room where the founders of Universal Robots years before were developing the prototype that would form the basis of their billion-DKK success.
The Director of MiR, Thomas Visti, sends a thank you to SDU for their involvement in the project and the company:
"Without SDU we would not have been here. And here I am not just talking about the company's start-up, but also the wonderful collaboration we have with the university and the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute.
Director Thomas Visti emphasizes that SDU Odense, with its location and focus on the robot industry, has been a source of MiR's explosive growth.
"It's a huge strength for both MiR and SDU that we are side by side. SDU has a unique talent mass which is absolutely essential to us. When we compare students from the SDU with the people we employ from other universities, we can see that they are some of the best and are at a high, high international level.
Thomas Visti, in addition to being a director, is also co-owner of the company and thus earns a big win on the sale. The same is the founder, former SDU-employee Niels Jul Jacobsen, and the three investors Esben Østergaard, Søren Michael Juul Jørgensen and Torben Frigaard Rasmussen.
Here and now, the five owners receive just short of 1 billion DKK from Teradyne. In addition, an additional 700 million DKK is triggered in bonus in 2020, provided that MiR reaches the annual turnover target for the period 2018-2020.