Shearwater has participated in Zabidou’s pre-seed round alongside Main Sequence, Antler and Metagrove Ventures to develop ultra-vision for manufacturing robotics.

Many production lines in recycling and heavy manufacturing still rely on manual inspection in dusty and hazardous environments. Zabidou is building real-time material classification that makes this work faster, cheaper, and safer. 

Zabidou combines low-cost RGB cameras and lasers with a software layer that reads multiple optical signals such as reflectivity, wavelength, polarisation and speckle to separate materials that look identical under standard imaging. It is designed to slot into conveyor lines and robotic cells to lift quality control, surface hazards and enable automated sorting.

A key part of our conviction is the founder. Cibby brings deep technical expertise and leadership to the problem. He previously founded Baraja where he served as CTO, and holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering along with a bachelor’s and a master’s in the field. We are excited to back him and the team as they build the software layer for material classification in industrial environments.