Issue 01
Inside Substance
Short, irregular updates from inside the company. For the people backing us, advising us, and watching us.
May 2026
01The Test

FELIX walked its first warehouse.

A facility in New Jersey, a few aisles, a lot of boxes, and a robot we have spent months building finally doing the thing it was built to do.

FELIX, the Substance autonomous risk monitoring robot
02How FELIX Operates

From simulation to the floor.

FELIX runs autonomously through a facility. LiDAR and vision build the digital twin. Thermal sees what the eye cannot. The combined signal identifies the root causes of potential losses and prevents them before they happen.

Simulation
The Floor

Three categories surfaced as the headline findings.

Finding I
Unsafe Stacking
Pallets stacked in ways that risk collapse. This is product damage and worker injury exposure that most facilities only catch after something falls.
Finding II
Missing Fire Extinguishers
Locations where extinguishers are required by code and were not present. The kind of finding that prices into renewals or triggers non-renewal entirely.
Finding III
Blocked Aisles
Egress paths obstructed by inventory, equipment, or furniture. OSHA territory, life safety, and a workers' compensation exposure long before any fire.

These were the headline findings. FELIX captured many more data points across the walk that we are still processing. More in the next issue.

Beyond the findings

What you are seeing is the trailer. Every policy Substance writes will pull from a far wider set of signals than legacy underwriting touches.

Imagine a pallet of Class IV plastics on a rack rated for Class II. Inventory sitting above the policy limit. A propane charging station six feet from a lithium-battery storage bay.

Things no human inspector finds in a single visit. That is the underwriting we are building.

Henish, Founding Robotics Engineer, and David, COO, testing FELIX at a facility in New Jersey
Henish (Founding Robotics Engineer, left) and David (COO, back) testing FELIX at the NJ facility.
After the walk

The facility owner has since agreed to share their current insurance policies with us.

The start of a real quote conversation. Not the end of a test.

A human inspector sees this once a year. FELIX sees it continuously.

03What's Next

The build, in flight.

Robotics / Data
From the floor to the digital twin.
In progress · Target quarters
  • Sensor fusion turning every walk into a digital twin Q2 2026
  • Risks and assets extracted from each twin Q2 2026
  • Full autonomy for FELIX in the field Q3 2026
  • Remote server processing on FELIX Q3 2026
Business / Tech
The platform behind the policy.
In progress · Target quarters
  • Substance Aether, the industry's first AI-native catastrophe model, built entirely in-house Q2 2026
  • Substance Policy Admin System Q2 2026
  • Substance Broker Portal Q2 2026
  • Insurance GTM program build Q3 2026
  • Carrier capacity lock-in Q4 2026
04How You Can Help

Stay close.

If you are reading this, you are likely already in our corner. Two specific asks for issue one.

Make an introduction to a warehouse, manufacturing, or data center broker Reply with reactions, questions, or things we should be thinking about
More from Substance