Mass.-based tech firm Cognex Corp. expands in Boulder

BOULDER — Massachusetts-based Cognex Corp. (Nasdaq: CGNX) has leased 14,310 square feet of office space at 4990 Pearl East Circle in Boulder where it will expand operations following the acquisition of two tech companies in the Boulder Valley.

Cognex, based just outside Boston in Natick, Mass., manufactures machine vision and barcode reader systems. It has leased the third floor of the building on Pearl East Circle, where it will house employees of two local companies it acquired in late 2016.

Cognex acquired Boulder-based Chiaro Technologies, a maker of a 3-D machine-vision sensor called Cloudburst, and Longmont-based Webscan Inc., a developer and manufacturer of barcode verification instruments. They now operate under the Cognex name.

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Abby Schervish, manager of corporate communications at Cognex, said in an email that employees from Webscan and Chiaro will be moving into the new space in Boulder early this summer. Chiaro’s employees will move from 1600 Range St. in Boulder, and Webscan’s engineering design group will move from 1341 Sherman Drive in Longmont to the new office in Boulder. The space will be used as an engineering and sales office, she said, declining to say how many employees will  be working in Boulder.

Chiaro was co-founded by chief executive Eric Moore and chief technology officer Benjamin Braker in 2005. Its Cloudburst sensor provides high-speed, real-time 3-D image streaming that is useful in applications where speed is more important than capturing a high-resolution image. The technology will complement Cognex’s 3-D sensors, which are used for 3-D vision applications.

Webscan was founded in 1995 by president Glenn Spitz in Brentwood, N.Y., and he moved the company to Longmont in 2006. Its flagship product enables manufacturers to ensure that barcodes marked on packages, parts and components are applied accurately before items are shipped, and they verify that codes comply with industry standards.

At the time of the acquisitions, Cognex’s president and chief executive, Robert J. Willett, said the “acquisitions add important capabilities in two high-growth areas of Cognex’s business. … “The Cloudburst sensor enables Cognex to address a wider range of applications and price points in the fast-growing 3-D vision market,” Willett said. “And the combination of Webscan’s verification software with our DataMan product line will enable Cognex to provide the industry’s broadest range of high-performance and easy-to-use verification solutions.”

Cognex receives most of its $520 million in annual revenue from general manufacturing applications in areas such as pharmaceutical, automotive, health care, packaging, aerospace and consumer-products manufacturing. The company employs about 1,400 workers worldwide.

The new office is in a building owned by Seattle-based Unico Properties LLC. Newmark Knight Frank agents Jared Leabch and Roger Simpson represented Cognex in the lease transaction.