Today, Viam announced the close of $45M Series B financing, an exciting milestone to fuel the company mission to accelerate AI, data, and innovation across robotics, IoT, and smart machines. Funding will be used to deepen enterprise partnerships, advance our developer ecosystem, and create a powerful bridge between software and hardware. Read the full announcement here. Today is an exciting milestone for Viam. I’m incredibly grateful to our team and investors, excited about what’s ahead, and convinced more than ever that the inflection point in automation isn’t just coming, but it’s here and rapidly transforming the devices we use everyday.

Viam’s goal is to be the platform for all smart machines and devices. This means any machine or device that has some ability to perceive the world, perhaps does something in the world, and might need some interaction with other systems. Considering these terms, a huge variety of machines might be thought of as smart, from household devices like thermostats and coffeemakers to industrial machinery like assembly line robots and autonomous vehicles… Giving us a massive mandate.

Smart machines have the power to solve major problems in the world, whether it be battling climate change, fighting forest fires, or cleaning oceans. The more I look at the electronics and smart home appliances in my house, the more I want to replace them with Viam. And that is exactly what I have been doing. Check out this blog post for the first of a series + to learn how it took me $80 and just four steps to hack my cat feeder to run on Viam.

Viam started nearly three years ago with a simple question: With all the promise of robotics, where are the robots? Why is it so hard to progress beyond vacuum cleaners (and why aren’t they better)? After a little digging, hacking, and thinking, the questions became much more serious. How will the world address big issues like climate change if robotics and automation are so hard, accessible to so few, and progressing so slowly?

Robotics has the potential to do so much good, but progress has been slowed by complicated hardware and software integrations, long development cycles, and people's fear of tripping over a robot on their way to work. At Viam, we’re addressing these issues by building a novel robotics platform that relies on standardized building blocks rather than custom code to create, configure, and control robots intuitively and quickly. We’re empowering engineers - aspiring and experienced - across industries to solve complicated automation problems with our innovative software tools.

In the future, humans and robots will work together in ways we cannot fathom. Science fiction authors, engineers, children, and most everyone has at some point imagined what a robot might do, whether it's clean their room, do dangerous construction work, or simply cut onions to prevent their eyes from watering. While our imagination about where robots could go is limitless, the path to getting there is incredibly murky.

In light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the last several weeks have been undoubtedly difficult for all in different ways. For me, one challenge I’ve encountered has been wanting to help, but not sure how to do it. There are many amazing organizations that need financial assistance (such as City Meals and Support Kind, among others), but I wanted to find a way to do more. As some of you may know, my parents are both physicians in two of the largest NYC hospitals, although neither work in the ER or ICU.

https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/hasta-la-vista

Two weeks ago I submitted the second version of the Server Side Public License (SSPL) to the OSI for review. The revision was based on feedback from the OSI license-review mailing list, which highlighted areas in the first version that would benefit from clarification. We think open source is important, which is why we chose to remain open source with the SSPL, as opposed to going proprietary or source-available. I am hopeful that the SSPL will also be declared an OSI-approved license, because the business conditions that prompted MongoDB to issue the SSPL are not unique to us and I believe the SSPL can lead to a new era of open source investment.

I wrote an email to my team addressing the anti-diversity-effort memo.