Renaud Heitz is a co-founder and the CTO of Exotec. He and Romain Moulin launched the company in June 2015 in the Lille area. They had known each other for more than twenty years and had worked together at GE.
Moulin leads the hardware side and Heitz the software. Together they built Skypod, a robot that climbs warehouse racks in three dimensions. The first system went to Cdiscount in Bordeaux in early 2017, and Skypod launched commercially in December 2017.
Exotec raised about €15 million in June 2018 and €77 million in September 2020. In January 2022 it raised $335 million in a Series D led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, at a $2 billion valuation. It was France's first industrial unicorn.
The company passed $1 billion in cumulative worldwide sales in 2024 and launched Skypod 2.0 in 2025, with about 1,300 staff. Its 2025 revenue was €340 million. Exotec is privately held.