Table of Contents
A Winnipeg-based robotics startup has raised C$1.8 million in seed funding to commercialise autonomous welding technology powered by artificial intelligence and machine vision. TetraGen Robotics closed the round in August 2026, with StepChange Capital leading and Emend Vision Fund participating. The company is targeting one of the most persistent skilled-labour shortages in North American manufacturing.
Welding is a discipline where demand for qualified tradespeople consistently outpaces supply across Canada and the United States. The startup is building systems that automate the welding process entirely, removing the dependency on human welders for routine and high-volume fabrication tasks without sacrificing the quality or precision that industrial customers require.
What Is TetraGen Robotics?
The company is a Canadian robotics startup founded in 2022 and headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The company develops autonomous welding systems that use AI and machine vision to perform welding tasks without human operators. Its technology is designed for industrial manufacturers who need consistent, high-quality welds at scale and who face ongoing difficulty hiring and retaining certified welding professionals.
The company was founded by Matt Khoshdarregi, a robotics researcher who completed his graduate work at the University of Manitoba. TetraGen operates in the industrial automation sector, which is undergoing significant transformation as manufacturers grapple with aging workforces, rising labour costs, and increasing demand for precision fabrication across industries including aerospace, oil and gas, shipbuilding, and heavy equipment manufacturing.
The C$1.8M Seed Round
TetraGen Robotics raised C$1.8 million in a seed funding round led by StepChange Capital, with participation from Emend Vision Fund. The round closed in August 2026 and will be used to accelerate product development, expand the engineering team, and begin commercial deployments with initial manufacturing customers in Canada. The C$1.8 million figure is denominated in Canadian dollars, reflecting the company’s Canadian operations and investor base.
StepChange Capital is a Canadian venture firm that focuses on early-stage technology companies. Emend Vision Fund, the co-investor, takes a thesis-driven approach to industrial and deep-technology startups. The combination of these two investors signals alignment between the funding partners on the long-term commercial opportunity in autonomous industrial welding.
The Autonomous Welding Problem TetraGen Is Solving
Canada faces a structural shortage of certified welding professionals. Industry groups estimate that tens of thousands of welding positions go unfilled across the country each year, with the gap widening as veteran tradespeople retire faster than new ones enter the profession. This is not unique to Canada: the American Welding Society has projected a shortfall of 330,000 welders in the United States by 2028.
Automated welding solutions have existed for decades in the form of robotic arms used in automotive manufacturing. However, these traditional systems require significant programming for each new part geometry, are expensive to set up, and cannot adapt dynamically to variations in material, joint fit-up, or environmental conditions. What makes what sets the startup apart is the use of real-time AI and machine vision to handle the variability that conventional welding robots cannot manage.
Industrial manufacturers in sectors such as oil and gas pipeline construction, heavy equipment, structural steel fabrication, and shipbuilding deal with high variability in weld geometry, position, and access. These applications have historically resisted automation because of that complexity. The company is targeting precisely these high-value, high-complexity use cases.
How TetraGen Robotics Technology Works
The system combines a robotic welding arm with a real-time machine vision system and an AI inference engine that processes visual data from the weld environment to make continuous adjustments during the welding operation. The machine vision system captures the joint geometry, detects variations in fit-up and surface condition, and feeds this data to the AI model, which adapts welding parameters such as travel speed, arc length, and wire feed rate to maintain weld quality.
This closed-loop approach is what distinguishes the TetraGen system from conventional teach-and-repeat robotic welding. A traditional welding robot follows a pre-programmed path and does not respond to real-world variation. The autonomous system effectively gives the robot the perceptual and adaptive capabilities of a skilled human welder, allowing it to handle joint configurations that would previously have required manual intervention.
The technology targets applications where weld quality is safety-critical, meaning that failures in the weld can have catastrophic downstream consequences. This positions the company in a segment of the market where customers are willing to pay a premium for proven, reliable autonomous welding solutions.
The Founder Behind TetraGen
Matt Khoshdarregi founded TetraGen Robotics in 2022 after completing robotics research at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. His academic work focused on intelligent manufacturing systems, giving him both the technical foundation and the industry connections to identify the market gap that TetraGen now addresses. The University of Manitoba has a strong engineering faculty and a history of applied research partnerships with Manitoba-based manufacturers, many of which operate in the natural resources and heavy industry sectors where autonomous welding has clear commercial value.
Khoshdarregi represents a pattern that is increasingly common in the Canadian startup ecosystem: a researcher-turned-founder who builds a company around a problem identified during academic work and validated through direct engagement with potential customers. This path from university lab to venture-backed startup is supported in Canada by programmes from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program, and provincial research commercialisation initiatives.
Winnipeg as a Robotics Hub
Winnipeg is an emerging centre for advanced manufacturing technology in Canada. The city is home to a significant industrial base across sectors including aerospace, agrifood processing, transportation equipment manufacturing, and natural resources. This industrial concentration creates natural customer proximity for a company like Canadian tech startups building hardware for manufacturers.
Manitoba’s provincial government has been active in supporting technology commercialisation through programmes administered by Manitoba Technology Accelerator and Economic Development Winnipeg. The province’s focus on diversifying its economy beyond agriculture and natural resources has created a supportive environment for startups targeting the industrial sector. The University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg both have growing commercialisation offices that support spinout activity from applied research.
What This Means for Canadian Manufacturing
Canada’s manufacturing sector accounts for roughly 10 percent of GDP and employs approximately 1.7 million people. Despite this scale, Canadian manufacturers have historically underinvested in automation compared to their peers in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The welding labour shortage is one of several factors forcing a reassessment of that posture, and venture-backed startups like TetraGen Robotics are part of the solution.
A seed round of C$1.8 million is modest by global venture standards, but for a deep-tech hardware company at the pre-commercial stage, it is a meaningful signal. The round is sufficient to build out a commercial-grade product, complete initial customer pilots, and generate the data needed to raise a larger Series A. If TetraGen Robotics can demonstrate measurable improvements in weld quality and throughput at customer sites, the path to institutional investment is well established in the Canadian market. Other Canadian deep-tech startups have followed this same trajectory from seed to Series A in under 18 months.
The broader robotics and industrial automation sector in Canada has attracted growing interest from investors, partly driven by nearshoring trends that are bringing manufacturing activity back to North America and partly by the recognition that Canadian labour productivity needs to improve if the country is to remain competitive in global manufacturing. TetraGen Robotics sits at the intersection of these macro trends.
TetraGen Robotics: Key Facts
| Founded | 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
| CEO | Matt Khoshdarregi (ex-University of Manitoba researcher) |
| Seed round raised | C$1.8 million (Canadian dollars) |
| Lead investor | StepChange Capital |
| Co-investor | Emend Vision Fund |
| Technology | Autonomous welding using AI and machine vision |
| Target market | Industrial manufacturers: oil and gas, aerospace, shipbuilding, heavy equipment |
| Headquarters | Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does TetraGen Robotics do?
TetraGen Robotics develops autonomous welding systems that use artificial intelligence and machine vision to perform welding tasks without human operators. The technology is designed for industrial manufacturers who need high-quality, consistent welds at scale and who face shortages of skilled welding professionals.
How much did TetraGen Robotics raise?
TetraGen Robotics raised C$1.8 million in Canadian dollars in a seed funding round. The round was led by StepChange Capital, with Emend Vision Fund also participating. The funding closed in August 2026 and will be used for product development, team expansion, and early commercial deployments.
Where is TetraGen Robotics based?
TetraGen Robotics is headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The company was founded in 2022 by Matt Khoshdarregi, a robotics researcher from the University of Manitoba. Winnipeg has a significant industrial manufacturing base in sectors including aerospace, transportation equipment, and natural resources.
Who are TetraGen Robotics investors?
The seed round was led by StepChange Capital, a Canadian venture firm focused on early-stage technology companies. Emend Vision Fund co-invested alongside StepChange. Both investors have a focus on industrial and deep-technology startups.
Stay ahead of Canada’s fastest-growing startups. Follow BestStartup Canada for daily coverage of funding rounds, founder stories, and tech innovation from coast to coast.
Sources
American Welding Society | University of Manitoba Faculty of Engineering | National Research Council Canada — IRAP | BestStartup Canada coverage of Canadian tech funding
