Paradigm’s Fire Department Robot Expands to Serve More First Responders

Firebot is a tank. No other words do Paradigm Robotics' system justice. The remotely controlled mobile metal robot is built to withstand temperatures of up to 1,202 degrees Fahrenheit for up to 15 minutes. The system is explosion-, bullet-, flame-proofed, and able to traverse spaces that are extremely hazardous for humans, courtesy of mini tank treads.

As the name suggests, the robot was built with an eye on firefighters. The system rolls into the danger, equipped with a variety of cameras and sensors, giving its human operators a better look at the situation inside.

Fire departments continue to be a key market for Paradigm, but in the in the little over a year since I visited the startup’s then-humble workspace in a University of Texas lab in Austin, that vision has expanded considerably.

“Now we focus more broadly on a vision of very rugged, scalable ground robots,” cofounder and CEO Siddarth Thakur told me on a call last week. “We discovered after selling to municipalities that it's kind of challenging due to their long sale cycles. But more broadly, we discovered that police officers had the same issues, and oil and gas companies had similar issues with inspection.”

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Thakur adds that defense contracting has become a key focus since the last time we spoke. In that time, the startup’s founders have graduated from UT, and taken Paradigm’s offices with them. In addition to serving as a corporate HQ, Firebots will also be assembled in Austin, proximity the company believes will contribute to quality assurance.

Paradigm’s team is still small, with a headcount of eight – six of which are engineers. Of course, meeting customer needs means scaling, and scaling will ultimately means hiring. To help with that bit, the company this week is announcing a $3.5 million pre-seed round, which joins an existing $350,000 angel investment.

Thakur says Paradigm has signed around $1 million worth of LOIs (letters of intent), and has closed contracts with environmental response teams. The company is currently building its V. 4 system, producing around eight to 10 units over the summer. Like the Paradigm team, the robots numbers are remaining small for the time being, as the company works to assure that the systems are equipped for the extremely different use cases.