Vention Opens Physical AI Lab in Montreal for Factory Robotics

Vention Opens Physical AI Lab in Montreal for Factory Robotics

Vention has opened a Physical AI research lab in Montreal focused on translating robotics research into deployable manufacturing automation, the company announced. The facility aims to close the gap between laboratory demonstrations of robotic manipulation and systems that meet the reliability and cost requirements of production environments.

The lab is led by Dr. Jimmy Li, Vention's Director of Physical AI, who previously conducted robotics and machine learning research at McGill University. Dr. Joelle Pineau, Chief AI Officer at Cohere, has joined as External Technical Advisor to guide the research program.

Why it matters

Most Physical AI research happens in controlled settings, but factory floors demand reliability across variable conditions, unstructured tasks, and cost constraints that academic benchmarks don't capture. Vention's access to 6,000 factories and 90 Fortune 500 manufacturers creates a feedback loop between model development and real production requirements — a combination that could accelerate the timeline from research breakthrough to industrial deployment.

Research agenda and industrial access

The lab's work spans industrial data collection, robotics control, motion planning, computer vision, vision foundation models, learning from demonstration, and reinforcement learning. The team currently numbers eight researchers and is hiring for more than 16 positions across robotics control, simulation, and Physical AI research.

Vention's manufacturing footprint gives researchers direct access to production environments and manipulation data for post-training foundation models. The company has already generated intellectual property from this work and expects to continue as the research advances.

Physical AI represents Vention's fastest-growing segment, with related revenue up 400 percent over the past year, according to the announcement.

From research to factory floor

One output from the lab is GRIIP, a modular Physical AI pipeline launched in February 2026 that handles scene digitalization, object segmentation, pose estimation, grasp selection, and collision-free motion planning. The system leverages foundation models from partners including NVIDIA alongside Vention's proprietary models. The company plans to release a public GRIIP Software Development Kit for engineering teams to adapt the pipeline to specific use cases.

Vention is also working with global industrial and electronics manufacturers on high-complexity robotic tasks in final assembly, including a collaboration with a large automotive original equipment manufacturer.

"Physical AI will fundamentally expand what manufacturers can automate, but the challenge is no longer simply proving that a robot can perform a task in a lab," said Etienne Lacroix, founder and CEO of Vention. "The real opportunity is making these capabilities reliable, economical, and deployable across thousands of factories."

Dr. Li emphasized the lab's integration with production environments: "Our clients aren't waiting for a finished product to test; they're in the room while we build it. That's unique in this field, and it's what lets us move faster from a research result to something that actually runs on a factory floor."

Vention operates a digital-first industrial automation platform with more than 28,000 machines deployed worldwide. The details of the lab opening were first reported by Vention in a company announcement.