Cerulion

What do they actually do

Cerulion is an open‑source robot middleware and desktop app for visualizing, debugging, logging, plotting, and controlling robots. It’s cross‑platform (Mac/Windows/Linux), released under GPL‑3.0, and the code and docs are public on GitHub. Today it’s in early access: teams install drivers on the robot, run a prebuilt frontend binary on their laptop, and connect over Cerulion’s low‑latency middleware GitHub, website.

The tool lets developers view sensor streams, inspect messages, send control commands, and record logs. It aims to interoperate with ROS/ROS2 message flows so teams can reuse existing topics and code. The core middleware is written in Rust, the GUI uses the Godot engine, and there are C++, Python, and Rust APIs for integration GitHub, Work at a Startup.

Who are their target customer(s)

• Enterprise robotics engineering teams: They run many robots across mixed OS/hardware and lose time to flaky networking, brittle tooling, and nondeterministic message delivery. They need reliable messaging and observability that can coexist with ROS/ROS2 stacks YC profile.
• Early‑stage robotics startups: Small teams can’t afford weeks on networking, logging, and tooling; they need a packaged setup that lets them focus on perception, planning, and features instead of infrastructure website.
• Field integrators and operations engineers (warehouses/factories): When robots fail in production, they need reliable logs, deterministic replay, and a simple GUI to diagnose issues on site without chasing inconsistent telemetry GitHub.
• Robotics researchers and university labs: They require reproducible experiment traces and lightweight simulation to test algorithms without tying up scarce hardware; tooling must be easy to install and share across teams roadmap.
• Controls/systems engineers building low‑latency controllers: They need predictable, fast message delivery and compatibility with existing software so control loops don’t need rewrites; they evaluate alternatives on latency, reliability, and ROS/ROS2 bridges roadmap.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Directly recruit teams from the founders’ YC/robotics network and active GitHub users for early access, and provide hands‑on integration help (driver installs, ROS/ROS2 bridging) until it’s running on their robots YC profile, GitHub.
• First 50: Publish guides, sample drivers, and reproducible demos; run workshops/webinars; seed a few university labs to produce public traces/tutorials showing iteration speed‑ups, supported by prebuilt binaries and the ROS/ROS2‑bridge roadmap roadmap, website.
• First 100: Package a standardized pilot (setup, training, prioritized bug fixes), convert early users to paid pilots, and recruit systems integrators/ops partners as a channel; use case studies from early enterprise users to speed procurement GitHub, YC profile.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Benchmark against the robot software market at ~US$20B in 2024, with robotics middleware (~US$1.9B) and robotic simulation (~US$0.9B base) as relevant subsegments GMI Insights, Dataintelo, Strategic Market Research.

Bottom-up calculation:

Applying a ~30% software share to the ~US$34B industrial robotics market implies ~US$10B annual software spend; Cerulion’s SAM is a subset focused on middleware/observability for industrial and warehouse teams Grand View Research, Mordor Intelligence.

Assumptions:

• Software share in industrial/warehouse robotics ~25–30% of total spend Mordor Intelligence.
• Focus on industrial/warehouse segments where reliability/observability needs are acute; excludes most consumer/educational robotics.
• Middleware/simulation are entry points within the broader software spend and may be expanded with adjacent tools over time.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Foxglove Studio: Cross‑platform app for visualizing, replaying, and inspecting robot data with custom panels; overlaps on GUI/observability, while Cerulion also bundles low‑level middleware Foxglove, blog.
• ROS tooling (RViz, rqt, rosbag): Default open‑source tools many teams already use for visualization, plotting, recording, and replay; deeply integrated with existing ROS/ROS2 stacks RViz, ROS Tools.
• Formant: Cloud robotics/fleet‑ops platform for telemetry, teleop, incident workflows, and analytics; overlaps on logging/replay but focuses on cloud‑scale fleet management vs. Cerulion’s local GUI + middleware Formant, Workflows.
• Gazebo / Ignition: Widely used simulators for physics, sensors, and full‑system testing; Cerulion plans lightweight simulation but mature projects still rely on Gazebo for complex scenarios Gazebo, paper.
• DDS and other messaging stacks (RTI Connext, eProsima Fast DDS, Eclipse Cyclone): Battle‑tested communication backbones for predictable, low‑latency, multi‑machine messaging; the baseline many teams compare when evaluating Cerulion’s messaging ROS DDS vendors.