MBody AI deploys, manages, and scales robotic workforces for large enterprises through a hardware-agnostic orchestration platform. Pulse 2.0 interviewed MBody AI CEO John Fowler to learn more about the company’s origins, enterprise robotics platform, customer results, competitive differentiation, and growth plans.
Executive Background
Fowler’s background spans law, capital markets, and executive leadership. Before joining MBody AI, he founded The Supreme Cannabis Company and helped transform it from an early-stage business into a publicly traded company.
Discussing his career, Fowler shared:
“I started my career practicing commercial and securities law before moving into operating companies. In 2014, I founded The Supreme Cannabis Company, which I helped build from an early-stage business into a publicly traded company. We ultimately raised and deployed more than $250 million, grew to nearly 1,000 employees and were acquired by Canopy Growth in 2021.”
Fowler was drawn to MBody AI by the opportunity to help enterprises navigate another rapidly evolving market:
“Robotics has reached a point where the technology can deliver real value, but enterprises are still figuring out how to deploy it effectively at scale. I saw an opportunity to help solve that problem and build a significant business around it.”
Formation Of The Company
The idea behind MBody AI emerged from the complexity enterprises face as they introduce robots from multiple manufacturers into their operations. Fowler described:
“As companies start putting more robots to work, they quickly run into a coordination problem. You might have one robot cleaning floors, another handling a different task and a third from an entirely different manufacturer. Each one can have its own software and operating system, with different parts and repair supply chains.”
“We thought there needed to be a better way to manage all of that. That’s what led to the MBody AI Orchestrator, which brings those systems together and manages them as a unified workforce.”
As CEO, Fowler is responsible for building the business around that technology:
“That includes working with customers and partners, expanding our deployments, building the team and making sure we’re focused on applications where robotics can solve a real business problem.”
The MBody AI Orchestrator
MBody AI deploys, manages, and scales robotic workforces for large enterprises. Its core technology, the MBody AI Orchestrator, enables different types and brands of robots to operate through a single system.
Fowler explained the platform by comparing it to a manager overseeing a human workforce:
“The manager assigns jobs, checks that they’re completed, responds when something changes, and looks for ways to make the operation more efficient. Orchestrator is designed to do that for a robotic workforce.”
The platform is not tied to a particular robotics manufacturer. This enables enterprises to select robots suited to specific operational requirements while managing them through one system.
“An enterprise can use the robots that make the most sense for its operation, and we’ll help them identify them, while having a single platform to manage it all.”
Competitive Differentiation
Rather than attempting to create one robot capable of performing every task, MBody AI focuses on coordinating specialized robots. Fowler highlighted:
“A lot of robotics companies are built around a particular piece of hardware. That can work well for a specific application, but it can also leave an enterprise managing a collection of separate and incompatible systems as it adopts more robots.”
“We’re hardware-agnostic, so we’re able to work across different manufacturers and applications. From the customer’s perspective, the goal is to make the robotic workforce feel like one system rather than a collection of individual machines.”
The Growing Need For Orchestration
The challenge of managing robots increases as enterprises deploy more machines across different use cases. Each system may have distinct software, operating procedures, and maintenance requirements.
Fowler observed:
“If you have one robot doing one job, it’s relatively easy to manage. Once you have dozens of robots doing different jobs, potentially from different manufacturers, things get much more complicated.”
MBody AI’s objective is to shield customers from much of this underlying complexity:
“The customer shouldn’t have to become an expert in all of that just to get the benefit of automation. That’s really the problem we’re solving. We want an enterprise to be able to say, ‘Here are the jobs we need done,’ and have the robotic workforce handle the coordination behind the scenes.”
Customer Return On Investment
MBody AI evaluates the value of a deployment through measures such as productivity, uptime, and the cost of completing a particular job. Fowler noted that robotic workforces can also help businesses perform tasks more consistently or frequently without expanding their existing teams.
He pointed to a gaming customer that needed a corridor cleaned at least once per day:
“After deploying a robotic fleet, they were able to clean that same corridor three times a day to the same standard, without expanding the workforce.”
“That’s a pretty tangible example of what we’re trying to accomplish. The customer wasn’t interested in owning a robot for the sake of owning one. They wanted a cleaner facility and a better guest experience, and the technology helped them get there.”
Significant Milestones
One of MBody AI’s most important milestones has been progressing beyond pilot programs to robots performing operational work for Fortune 500 customers. Fowler emphasized that the company has generated revenue and repeat business from these deployments, providing important validation for its model.
Most of MBody AI’s deployments have been in hospitality, particularly with casino and resort operators. Across these deployments, the company has cumulatively provided cleaning services covering approximately 561 million square feet.
Fowler discussed how this practical experience has influenced the platform’s development:
“We’ve learned a lot from seeing how robotic systems perform in real operating environments, and that’s shaped how we’re developing Orchestrator. We’re thinking less about individual robots and more about how an entire robotic workforce should operate, communicate and improve over time.”
The Future Of Enterprise Robotics
Fowler believes enterprise robotics is entering a significant period of adoption as hardware becomes more effective and organizations face higher labor costs and difficulties filling certain roles.
“The hardware has gotten effective enough that companies can start looking at robots as a practical part of their workforce rather than an experiment. At the same time, labor costs are going up, and many businesses are having a hard time finding people for certain jobs. Those two trends are going to continue pushing adoption.”
As deployments expand, he expects the conversation to shift from individual machines to the management of entire robotic workforces:
“The interesting part is what happens after a company buys its first few robots. Eventually, it’s not about one machine anymore. It’s about managing an entire robotic workforce. I think that’s where orchestration becomes increasingly important, and that’s the problem we’re building MBody AI to solve.”
Future Company Goals
MBody AI’s priorities include entering new markets, expanding within existing enterprise accounts, and adding capabilities to the Orchestrator platform.
The company is also exploring applications beyond its established hospitality deployments. Fowler outlined:
“Outdoor commercial work is an area we’re actively pursuing, including cleaning, mowing for lawns and golf courses, and parking lot striping.”
The broader goal is to remove the technological and managerial barriers that can make enterprise robotics difficult to adopt:
“If we can make robotic workforces easier to deploy, manage, and scale, we think there’s a very large opportunity ahead for those enterprises that need to expand their automated workforces.”
