On October 22, MassRobotics brought a group of promising robotics startups to Analog Devices’ co-creation space in San Jose for a Startup Open House hosted by ADI’s Emerging Tech Hub. The goal was to put early-stage founders in the same room as the people at a global semiconductor leader who can help them build and scale.
For hardware founders, working with a large corporation can feel daunting. Big companies bring longer timelines, layered organizations, and a lot of doors to knock on. They also bring technology, customers, and capital that a young company can’t easily find elsewhere. The open house was designed to make that relationship tangible.
ADI is a MassRobotics strategic sponsor, and its commitment goes well beyond a logo on a banner. Colm Prendergast, head of the Emerging Tech Hub at Analog Garage, committed to offering MassRobotics startup residents its engineering services and domain expertise to help founders scale their technical visions faster. This visit showcased that offering.
MassRobotics brought eight startups spanning tactile sensing, smart materials, autonomy, and Physica AI, including: Contactile, RasLabs, P!ng, Saro Robotics, Vizi AI, Gitinama, Hardhat Robotics
After introductions to various ADI teams and an overview of their engineering offerings, founders then split into small groups and rotated through 30-minute sessions with three ADI teams: ADVentures, ADI’s corporate venture arm, alongside Analog Garage; ADI’s sales and robotics business unit teams; and the Emerging Tech Hub, which led a tour of its robotics lab and live demos. A wrap-up discussion closed the day, with founders sharing what they learned and offering feedback to ADI.
Every founder got focused face time with the people who invest, the people who sell components and support designs, and the engineers who build alongside startups.
Crossing the robotics “double chasm”
ADI opened with a framing that resonated with every founder in the room: go-to-market for robotics startups is different. Software startups have one chasm to cross, from early adopters to the mainstream. Robotics companies face two. The first is getting from prototype to early adopters. The second, getting from early adopters to the early majority, is where hardware makes scaling especially hard.
ADI’s view is that today’s startups are tomorrow’s industry leaders, and it wants to be part of that journey. The company sees a role in helping with MVP and proof-of-concept work to cross the first chasm, and with product development to cross the second.
To do that, ADI offers four ways to engage, each backed by a different team:
- Vendor: ADI’s robotics business unit and sales teams supply components and design support.
- Partner: the Emerging Tech Hub works hands-on with startups on technical challenges.
- Joint development: Analog Garage, ADI’s breakthrough technology incubator, explores co-development opportunities.
- Investor: ADVentures, ADI’s corporate venture fund, invests in early-stage startups at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds.
For founders, the takeaway were: a large company is not one door, but several. Knowing which team fits your stage and need is half the battle.
Inside the Emerging Tech Hub
The Emerging Tech Hub, part of ADI’s Analog Garage, is built to help startups close technical and commercialization gaps so they can focus on what they do best. As The Robot Report describes it, the Hub is a robotics-focused initiative that brings startups and established robotics companies closer to ADI’s technical teams, including engineers working with newly released or still-in-development technologies.
ADI frames the journey in four stages, with the Hub supporting each one:
- Idea: turn your vision into a clear path forward.
- Prototype: rapidly build and test with expert guidance.
- Validate: verify performance, refine your solution, and reduce risk.
- Scale: prepare for production and scale with confidence.
What startups get falls into three areas. Technical expertise means access to ADI engineers and domain experts across robotics, controls, edge AI, power, and system integration. Development resources include labs, tools, rapid prototyping, test and validation, and reference designs. Scale readiness covers designing with ADI, sourcing, production readiness, and industry connections.
Engagements are flexible. A startup might need a short advisory conversation, longer-term technical support, or full co-development. The Hub’s process starts with outreach and consulting to understand a company’s challenges. It then moves to enablement (pointing to the right tools, services, and partners), collaboration on real customer challenges, and co-creation through joint product development and long-term partnerships. Cameron Villone of the Hub describes the approach as co-development, starting by establishing a company’s current capabilities and goals and aligning them with the Hub’s mission.
Just as important for founders: startups keep their IP, the model is built to be collaborative rather than competitive, and engagement models are designed to fit how startups work.
Lab Tour
The lab tour showed what co-development looks like in practice. One highlight was a proof of concept the Hub first built for NVIDIA GTC in March 2026: a bimanual robot that manipulates cables in a data center. This project involved swapping cables on a server rack that required precise two-handed coordination in tight, low-visibility spaces, with millimeter-level positioning to align connectors without damaging ports. Founders saw how sensing choices shape what a robot can do.
What’s next
The visit turned an introduction into real relationships. Our startups left with direct contacts across ADI’s venture, sales, and engineering teams, and a clearer picture of how ADI and Emerging Tech Hub engineers can help them prototype faster, de-risk their designs, and prepare for production.
This is what MassRobotics exists to do: connect our startups with the partners, resources, and expertise they need to scale. Thank you to Colm Prendergast and the entire Emerging Tech Hub, ADVentures, Analog Garage, and ADI sales and business unit teams for an outstanding day, and for ADI’s continued support as a MassRobotics strategic sponsor.
