👪 Future of Manufacturing Community: We have 140 members in our community, the waitlist is growing and we will invite more people over the next months. As a reminder, this community is designed for people who work on the digital transformation in manufacturing, coordinate and drive digitization projects, and scout new ideas. Please note, building a diverse community is a key priority for me.
Siemens acquired Supplyframe, a marketplace for the global electronics value chain, for around $700M. Supplyframe got started 18 years ago and its Design-to-Source Intelligence (DSI) ecosystem has grown to over 10 million engineering and supply chain professionals worldwide. The company made around $70M in revenue last year, so Siemens is paying a 10x revenue multiple for this acquisition. The acquisition shows you how valuable these industrial platforms can become.
The article also mentioned an interesting quote by the CEO of Locus Robotics that explains the current state of robotics well: “everyone is looking for the technology that will help them compete with Amazon and its massive robotics army.”
🏭 U.S. manufacturing activity is picking up strongly
🏭 Mars is building a digital twin of its manufacturing supply chain
Mars is partnering with Microsoft Azure to build intelligent manufacturing supply chains. It also partners with Accenture that supports Mars to achieve its “cloud-first strategy”. With the deployment of Digital Twins and leveraging data from the field, Mars hopes to empower people on-site to make real-time decisions to optimize production and increase margins. The leading person behind this project is the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) and it shows you how much effort and partners are necessary to incorporate digital technologies.
Lastly - and no surprise for me - Mars is also trying to improve digital skills training for its global workforce and is partnering again with Accenture and Microsoft here.
🏭 Accenture acquired German engineering consulting firm Umlaut.
Speaking of Accenture, the global services and consultancy company strengthen its industrial practice by acquiring Umlaut, a German engineering consulting and services firm with 4,200 employees. Umlaut is particularly focused on industries such as automotive, aerospace & defense, and, energy and will join Accenture's Industry X department. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Since 2017, Accenture has made 22 (!) acquisitions to strengthen its Industry X capabilities - seems like manufacturing is a very important industry for Accenture.
🤖 Is this a motherboard? No - it’s the world's largest steel mill - the Gwangyang Steel Plant in South Korea (Source).
The on-demand manufacturing marketplace Xometry filed to go public. It’s an interesting and not unexpected move that will give the company more money to keep on growing. After acquiring Shift in Europe, it’s well possible that Xometry will try to further expand in Europe and acquire some of the other players. This is a common practice for marketplaces and the IPO should give the company enough cash to do that. Its competitors - Protolabs - acquired the European competitor 3D Hubs just a few months ago. Xometry has raised around $200M and made $149M in revenue with an operating loss of $29M last year.
🦄 Cognite raised $150M led by TCV.
A rare European (Norwegian) industrial unicorn is born: Cognite. The company raised $150M led by TCV that brings its valuation to $1.6bn. It has built a DataOps platform that uses Machine Learning and subject-matter expertise to convert data into insights. Data Scientists can also build and train models on the platform to optimize production.
The company has a bit of a “special” history. The Norwegian oil and gas firm Aker set up the company in 2016 which also explains why its customer base is especially strong in oil and gas (eg. BP, Saudi Aramco). I’m sure Aker was quite helpful to shape the product and getting more customers in that sector. Very rare to see this kind of growth in the industrial world - the company now employs over 500 employees.
🦄 Formlabs raised $150M Series E led by Softbank Vision Fund 2.
Another industrial unicorn is Formlabs. The 3D printing company raised $150M Series E led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 that brings its valuation to $2bn. Even today, most 3D printing technology is still too expensive and Formlabs tries hard to bring down the cost of its stereolithography (SLA) and selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printers. Fun fact, Formlabs customers have printed “tens of millions of nasopharyngeal swabs used on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic”.
💰 Poka raised a $25M Series B led by 40 North Ventures.
🤑 Twaice raised a $26M Series B led by Energize Ventures.
The Munich-based battery analytics software company Twaice raised $26M led by Energize Ventures which brings its total financing to $45M. Its software helps to enhance the transparency and predictability of batteries - a fast-growing market. Due to electrification and electromobility, the demand is soaring for high-performing battery technologies. Along the way, the company has secured several partnerships with companies such as BearingPoint (consulting), MHP (consulting), and MunichRe (insurance) and counts Audi, Daimler, and Hero Motors to its customers.
🤑 Gideon Brothers raised a $31M Series A led by Koch Disruptive Technologies.
👉 Northvolt (SWE): battery developer and manufacturer Northvolt has raised $2.75bn to ramp up its battery production. Read more…
👉 MaintainX (US): the mobile-first platform for frontline workers to help them track maintenance tasks and operations has raised a $39M Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Read more…
👉 Realtime Robotics (US): that is building control on top of industrial robotics has raised $31M Series A from several investors including HAHN Automation, SAIC Capital Management, and Toyota AI Ventures. Read more…
👉 DessIA (France): that develops software to automate the concept engineering process has raised €5.5M seed round led by btov industrials. Read more…
👉 Tractian (Brazil): the predictive maintenance software provider has raised a $3.2M Seed round led by DGF Investments. Read more…
IV. Additional content and the I40 Landscape 👇
Manufacturing IT Podcast
I was sitting down with Daniel Langley from Manufacturing IT Recruitment to talk about the skills gap, talent shortage, and how to solve this massive problem in manufacturing. You can listen to it on Spotify here or on Youtube here.
“I have one very strong thesis: manufacturing companies, the only way for them to survive is to uplevel their current workforce because they won’t be able to hire the very best talent and they won’t solve the skills gap just by hiring externally.”
Industry 4.0 Map - Reinventing the Factory Stack
There are now in total nearly 500 companies in the landscape, which I updated in April. More to come soon.
Do you think it is possible to give access to Factory Stack in the form of a list (Airtable?) with metadata, like website URL, added-date, category, ... ? It would be very useful to find the company but also to know new companies?
Do you think it is possible to give access to Factory Stack in the form of a list (Airtable?) with metadata, like website URL, added-date, category, ... ? It would be very useful to find the company but also to know new companies?