Why we Invested in A&K Robotics
Nimbus Synergies Portfolio Update : Behind the Deal
Written by Pasha Razavi & Jason Robertson
There's a version of retirement most of us carry somewhere in the back of our minds: Italy. The Maldives. Greece. The long-haul flight finally booked. The trip to see the grandchildren, or the one you always promised yourself. Travel as the reward for a life well-lived, the moment when time finally becomes yours again.
The quiet irony is that by the time many of us get there, our bodies have different plans.
We are living and working longer than any generation before us and the boundaries between career and retirement have blurred as people continue contributing well into their seventies, either by choice or by necessity. And so, the trips we dreamed of at fifty, we're now taking at seventy-five. With arthritic knees. With the kind of fatigue that makes a long terminal feel genuinely dangerous. With a quiet, private calculation: is this still worth it? Can I still do this?
For millions of older adults including the 35% of adults over 70 who live with meaningful mobility limitations, that question doesn't have a comfortable answer. Airports – monuments to human connection and possibility – have become among the most physically punishing environments that aging travelers encounter. Long concourses. Even longer lines. Crowded gates. The indignity of waiting for someone to push you somewhere or the pride that refuses to ask.
That's the problem A&K Robotics is solving. And it's one of the reasons Nimbus Synergies invested.
The Problem is Bigger Than It Looks
Mobility loss among seniors is one of the most consequential and least discussed health crises of our time. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one in three people over 65 falls each year with hip fractures carrying a staggering 20–30% one-year mortality rate; however, the downstream health effects are often invisible in aggregate data. Loss of independent movement is associated with double the risk of depression, accelerated cognitive decline, and deeper social isolation. Surveys consistently find that mobility ranks among the top three quality-of-life priorities for seniors – ahead of income and ahead of housing – because mobility is the physical expression of autonomy.
As populations age, this is becoming a public health challenge at scale. Canada's senior population is projected to grow from 7.3 million today to more than 9.5 million by 2035. In the US, those over 65 will exceed 21% of the population by 2030. Japan and much of Western Europe are already past 30%. The systems we rely on to support aging populations (i.e. healthcare, infrastructure, service, etc.) were simply not designed for this demographic reality. Maintaining safe, independent movement is becoming a core determinant of health. And yet our solutions haven't kept pace.
Why Airports — and Why Now
If you want to understand the scale of the mobility problem, start at airports: vast distances, dense crowds, and unforgiving timelines. For many seniors, this prompts a quietly private question: can I still do this?
The numbers tell a striking story. Passengers requesting mobility assistance at major US airports already exceed one million per year at large hubs and that figure is growing faster than overall passenger volumes. In some European airports, PRM (Passengers with Reduced Mobility) traffic is expanding six times faster than general traffic. Heathrow invested the equivalent of CAD $30M to upgrade its mobility assistance contract. AENA, the world's largest airport operator, managing 46 airports across Spain, spends €94 million annually on PRM services. It is their fastest-growing cost centre and their highest priority to address.
The status quo is manual wheelchair escorts: labour-intensive, expensive, prone to failure, and in the view of many passengers, undignified. "Failure to provide wheelchair service" is consistently the top disability-related complaint to the US Department of Transportation. The system is under strain from every direction including rising labour costs, union tensions, and a growing passenger base. The gap between what airports are legally obligated to provide and what they can actually deliver is widening.
Automation isn't a nice-to-have. For airports, it's becoming an operational necessity.
What A&K Actually Built
A&K Robotics, founded by Matthew Anderson and Jessica Yip in Vancouver, has developed the Cruz™ autonomous mobility pod: a purpose-built, fully self-driving electric vehicle designed to transport passengers with reduced mobility through complex indoor environments.
A passenger boards, inputs their destination in any major language, and the pod navigates there independently, adjusting its route around crowds, re-routing for stop changes on the fly, arriving on schedule. There are no attendants required. No waiting. No surrender of dignity. Just movement on the passenger's own terms.
Technically, the Cruz™ platform is a full-stack solution: purpose-built hardware with a multi-modal sensor array providing 360-degree coverage, GPUs enabling real-time navigation, proprietary SLAM-based mapping that can cover 500,000 square feet in half a day, and a fleet management platform (CruzFleet™) that gives airport operators live visibility and control. No floor magnets, no beacons, no infrastructure overhaul. The pods operate in the terminal as it exists.
This isn't a retrofit or an adaptation. It's a system designed from the ground up for this specific problem.
At Vancouver International Airport (YVR), A&K completed a multi-phase pilot that exceeded customer experience targets across customer satisfaction and user recommendation metrics. Every passenger arrived on schedule. The entire international pier was mapped and programmed. The pods handled peak congestion, gate changes, and navigation across dozens of destinations throughout the pier. YVR's CEO spoke publicly about the project's success.
A parallel deployment at Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas, one of the world's busiest airports, operated by AENA, told a similar story, confirming that the technology performs across different environments, geographies, and scales of operation.
Why We Invested
Nimbus Synergies’ investment thesis is grounded in health. We look for companies that meaningfully improve outcomes and address structural inadequacies in how healthcare is delivered, supported, and experienced. A&K fits that mandate.
The link between mobility and health is not metaphorical. Preserved mobility reduces fall risk and hospitalization. It maintains mental health and cognitive function. It keeps people connected to family and community. When a 74-year-old who hasn't flown in three years can board a Cruz™ pod, navigate to their gate independently, and make it to their daughter's wedding, that is a health outcome. It may not fit neatly in an EHR, but it is real.
We were also compelled by the founders. Matthew and Jessica have built something technically exceptional under conditions of significant resource constraint: a lean team, limited capital, and a multi-year sales cycle in one of the most demanding enterprise environments imaginable. And they have done it with discipline, creativity, and with a clear-eyed understanding of what they don't yet know. That self-awareness, and their pattern of surrounding themselves with people who can close the gaps, is exactly what we look for in early-stage founders.
A&K is a BC company, rooted in Vancouver's innovation ecosystem and one with a special place in our own history: more than a decade ago, Matthew and Jessica walked through the doors of The GENERATOR, Nimbus' free health startup tech hub for early-stage founders. We've watched this company – and them! – grow from an idea into a globally competitive platform and backing them at this stage feels less like a new relationship than a long one finally reaching its next chapter.
We are also incredibly proud and privileged to be joining our friends at BDC's Industrial Innovation Venture Fund, who led this round. BDC I2VF backs Canada's most ambitious deep-tech companies, and their conviction here as lead investor is a strong signal about where A&K is headed. For Nimbus, investing alongside them in a homegrown company that tackles a real health problem with defensible, globally relevant technology is exactly the kind of investment our mandate was designed to make.
The world is aging. Mobility is health. A&K is building the infrastructure that connects the two.