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The new $3b robot factory shooting for the moon

John DavidsonColumnist

Sep 26, 2023 – 10.00am

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Key Points

Sydney’s Advanced Navigation is expanding its capacity more than tenfold
The high-tech factory will build navigation systems for submarines and rockets
Based on its latest funding round, it’s worth around $1 billion

Advanced Navigation, the deep-tech unicorn backed by Malcolm Turnbull and the US private equity fund KKR, has moved into a new robotics factory capable of churning out $3 billion worth of navigation and surveying equipment a year, the company said.

That output, amounting to 150,000 devices a year at an average price of about $20,000, is more than ten times the company’s current manufacturing capacity, and that’s just for the initial phase of the new factory, located at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Tech Lab in Botany, said Advanced Navigation co-founder and CEO, Xavier Orr.

John Davidson is an award-winning columnist, reviewer, and senior writer based in Sydney and in the Digital Life Laboratories, from where he writes about personal technology.