Why a French software company picked Pittsburgh for its US HQ

Millions in federal funding for industry programs. A bigger space for research teams. Government contracts for a local startup. And now, an international company laying roots here.

Following a slew of recent Pittsburgh robotics expansion news, French software company Tesseract Solutions is expanding to the city and calling its new US branch KMeleon, Inc.

The company says its software allows robot suppliers to program industrial robotic arms without “the need to use source code or complicated programming language.”

An Allegheny Conference on Community Development spokesperson told Technical.ly that KMeleon had no connections to the region prior to this past January, when the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development put the company in contact with Allegheny Conference affiliate Pittsburgh Regional Alliance.

KMeleon will be taking up residence in Lawrenceville, at the Field Day coworking space, because of the neighborhood’s growing reputation as a robotics hub. Tesseract CEO Florian Dordiain cited nearby institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Robotics Network as making the city the right choice for the company.

“It was an obvious choice, as Pittsburgh is the robotics capital of the world with an extremely strong and supportive robotics ecosystem,” Dordain said in a statement, referring to Pittsburgh Robotics Network’s self-proclaimed title. “Pittsburgh is a place where connecting with people and establishing business relationships is easy.”

While neither the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance nor the Pittsburgh Robotics Network contributed funding to KMeleon’s expansion effort, the company said both entities were instrumental to making its hopes for expansion a reality. On the Alliance’s end, President Mark Anthony Thomas said the organization is looking forward to having the company in the city so that its technology can contribute to the region’s status as a robotics hub.

“By being in Pittsburgh, KMeleon has positioned itself to thrive as part of one of the world’s top robotics clusters,” Thomas said. “It’s also adding to an ecosystem of transformative companies and founders that recognize that Pittsburgh is where what’s next in tech is happening now.”

Currently KMeleon has nine employees, with plans to have five based in Pittsburgh and a long-term goal of scaling up to 15 local employees.

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.