It is a story – alas – too French, with an almost known scenario in advance: a start -up born of tricolor genius, bought by foreign investors and which, financially suffocated, ends up being at the court of the court. On February 17, Aldebaran should be placed in receivership, the first step before a possible liquidation. A curious telescoping, while under the vaults of the Grand Palais, during the recent Summit on AI, billions of euros in investments were announced by the President of the Republic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeqcq75qj_Q
For a long time, the company was presented as a national champion of robotics and artificial intelligence. Nao, the first humanoid robot developed by his teams in the late 2000s, had everything to be the standard bearer of a blue, white, red success: 5 kilos, 58 centimeters high, two arms, two legs, a Friendly boil and two round eyes like balls. From his first steps, we see him swaying on Michael Jackson. The host Thierry Ardisson makes it the mascot of his program Hi Terriens on Canal +. Some models enter schools, nursing homes or hospitals where caregivers use them for the management of children with autistic disorders. A few years later, his cousin Pepper, capable of detecting emotions will be, above all sold in Japan as a “reception hostess” in stores.
Except that behind the window, Aldebaran’s commercial results do not take off. Some only 30,000 robots have been sold worldwide since the creation of the company, including 19,000 Nao. Twenty years after its birth, the company has only 2 million euros in cash, according to the information collected by L’Express. Insufficient to pay the February wages of the 160 employees. A dismissal plan on almost half of the workforce should be announced in the coming days. The last chance operation, to avoid disappearance.
At the helm, a German foundation
How did we get there? By a cocktail of questionable strategic choices – the desire to specialize only on humanoid robots -, of turns taken a little late – that of AI – and repeated transfers which ended up weakening society. In 2005, it all started well with its founder Bruno Maisonnier. With the lifting of funds and public subsidies, the start-up grows quickly. But to finance research and continue to grow, she needs much more money. In France, investors are cautious and it is a Japanese, the gigantic SoftBank conglomerate, which invests 100 million euros in 2012. Three years later, the group took control of almost 95 % of the box. At the top of the French State, the transfer to a foreign investor of one of the tech nuggets then disturbs anyone. “I sell my shares to allow Aldebaran to go further with SoftBank and to allow me to get out of the operational by taking height,” said Bruno Maisonnier.
The covid and the hazardous investments of SoftBank, especially in the Coworking giant WeWork, upset everything: the Japanese reduces the sail, needs fresh money and ends up reselling Aldebaran in 2022 to a German group, URG, United Robotics Group. But the financial structure of these new shareholders is rather baroque, with a cascade of subsidiaries. At the very top of the pyramid, a foundation, fueled by German public money and whose objective is to depollute the groundwater of the Ruhr … We are far from the robots.
A simple “business unit”
Above all, the economic model imposed by the Germans is singular: the French company to assume research and production costs, and the Germans to deal with marketing and the marketing of machines. Aldebaran ultimately only receives lean sales of sales. Not enough to cover your expenses. “We were in reality only a” business unit “of the group and therefore a cost center”, comments Jean-Marc Bollmann, the French boss of Aldebaran, soberly. In August, URG cut the tap, not even responding to the orders of the court administrator or the requests of the Ministry of the Economy.
The CIRI, the Bercy unit in charge of rescuing businesses in difficulty, has been seized, but did not wish to answer our questions. The EY cabinet would have been mandated for a time to find buyers, but none has followed up. Then, Jean-Marc Bollmann resumed his pilgrim’s stick, toading at all doors. “Swiss groups would be on the ranks,” says the boss. In the meantime, the engineers continue to work on a version 7 of Nao. But the little robot no longer wants to dance.
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