futuristic artificial intelligence face technology background
Makersite, a leading provider of supply chain digital twins for product sustainability, risk and cost optimization for the world's leading brands, announces the completion of an $18 million funding round. The German startup uses AI, data and apps to make sustainable product and supply chain decisions at scale, helping manufacturing companies overcome complex challenges across the value chain.
Hitachi Ventures, the global venture capital arm of Hitachi, Ltd., and Translink Capital, a VC fund based in Silicon Valley, are leading the investment, with the participation of KOMPAS, a venture capital fund based in the European Union, and seed investor Planet A. The investment follows strong and profitable growth in revenues and customers over the past 12 months. The funding will be used to continually support its offerings to ever-growing customers, including Microsoft, Vestas and Cummins.
100% of the world's carbon emissions come from products: the way they are made, what we need to use them and the end of their life cycle. However, less than 1% of all products have sustainability as a design parameter. At the same time, companies are called upon to comply with new regulations for reporting and reducing emissions. A major problem is that 90% of emissions in manufacturing companies come from the supply chain, but Scope 3 emissions are difficult to track and even more difficult to reduce.
“The products that arrive on the market today are often designed many years ago. The market needs a solution that helps design tomorrow's sustainable products today, ”shares Tobias Jahn, partner of Hitachi Ventures. “For businesses to become greener and ready for a sustainable economy, awareness of a product's environmental impact and its effect on costs, compliance and supply chains during product development is a prerequisite. By bringing the data into product development and supply chains, Makersite understands everything that is needed to undertake sustainable product design, ”adds Jahn.
Makersite empowers the development and procurement teams of manufacturing companies to make better decisions about what to buy and from where, at scale. Makersite's AI automatically maps a company's portfolio of products, suppliers and manufacturing processes against over 140 materials and supply chain databases. It then builds granular and precise digital twins of each product and how they are made, used and disposed of. These dynamic, multi-criteria models and seamlessly integrated apps enable transparency and understanding of multiple factors, including environmental footprint, should-costing, and compliance risks, faster than any other current approach. Makersite was founded in 2018 by Neil D'Souza, former CTO of Thinkstep, which Sphera later acquired. Since then, it is the only cloud-based platform that combines data aggregation and live applications for agile product lifecycle management.
“We have devoted decades of experience to solving a problem that has so far escaped the manufacturing industry. In an increasingly complex environment, how can better products be made faster? One of the answers we have found is to simplify and decentralize the decision-making process by providing multi-criteria data. Accurate, instant and actionable on the implications of decisions in terms of sustainability, costs and risks, ”said Neil D'Souza, founder of Makersite. “We have been honored by the industry's response and have grown profitably, just by word of mouth, to date. With this investment, we will increase delivery and go-to-market capabilities to continue delivering our state-of-the-art solution. To many other customers who have begun their transformation towards the new normal of sustainable business, ”added D'Souza.
“Many manufacturers face pressure from customers and regulations to reduce carbon emissions. Makersite is one of the only platforms that allows manufacturers to drill down at the SKU level without the heavy manual labor required, ”said Toshiya Otani, Managing Director at TransLink Capital.
“Accelerating the decarbonisation of the built environment and production is a central investment theme for KOMPAS. Understanding the impact of a product during its life cycle to make more sustainable design and purchasing choices is critical to the decarbonisation of our supply chains, ”explained Sebastian Peck, Partner at KOMPAS. “Makersite empowers companies with the data and analytics capabilities to facilitate the operational changes needed to create more sustainable and successful products. We are delighted to have participated in this funding round and look forward to supporting Neil and his team as the company grows, ”concluded Peck.
“We are witnessing an unprecedented unification of all industrial sectors, with the aim of decarbonising and cleaning up our supply chains,” said Nick de la Forge, Co-founder and Partner at Planet A Ventures. “Makersite's technology enables companies to obtain the granular product information they need to drive sustainable transformation. We are proud to further support Neil and the Makersite team in driving this global ambition with their award-winning software, ”added de la Forge.
For more information, visit makersite.io.
Makersite is an award-winning software-as-a-service provider that helps manufacturing companies solve the complex challenges associated with their products and supply chains. Founded in 2018 by CEO and founder Neil D'Souza, the Stuttgart-based company employs more than 30 employees across Europe, America and Asia. Their client portfolio includes companies such as Microsoft, Lush, Cummins and Vestas. Among other areas, Makersite is a leader in supply chain transformation and full automation of LCAs and Scope 3 reports. In 2021 alone, over 8 million LCAs were processed through the cloud platform.
Hitachi Ventures is the strategic arm of Hitachi, Ltd's Corporate Venture Capital. We invest in innovative startups of strategic relevance to Hitachi, Ltd., which respond to the company's key technology challenges in target areas such as mobility, healthcare and smart life, industry, energy and IT. With offices in Munich and Boston, we cover Europe, Israel and North America. We are looking for leading startups with attractive technologies and business models, which we support as investors and through strategic partnerships with Hitachi business units.
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Translink Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in technology-based startups in the consumer, enterprise and blockchain. Founded in 2006, the firm has over $1 billion in assets under management. It was designed to bring together founders and their innovative companies with a unique set of resources and networks to support their journey towards building foundational companies in their industry. Translink Capital's consumer portfolio companies include or have included: Aktiia, Empowerly, Epic! Market Kurly, Misfit (acquired by Fossil), Molekule, Noom, SoundHound and Within (acquired by Meta).
KOMPAS is an early-stage venture capital firm that funds breakthrough innovations that accelerate digital transformation and industrial automation in the built environment. Founded in October 2021, KOMPAS supports the creation of a more sustainable economy by supporting innovative engineering solutions that drastically reduce waste and CO2 emissions. KOMPAS is led by partners Sebastian Peck, Talia Rafaeli and Andreas Strasser and is headquartered in Copenhagen with offices in Amsterdam, Berlin and Tel Aviv. Fund I ($ 160 million) funds Seed and Series A companies in Europe, Israel and North America.
Planet A is an investment fund that collaborates with European green tech start-ups that have a significant positive impact on our planet and build globally scalable businesses. Our mission is to contribute to an economy within the boundaries of the planet. We support innovation in four key areas: climate mitigation, waste reduction, resource saving and biodiversity protection.
First in the European VC world, we offer scientific impact assessments to support our investment decisions and empower founders to manage and improve their impact. A large network of founders and experts supports our portfolio companies. Investments include Traceless, Ineratec, C1, GoodCarbon and Makersite. The original text of this announcement, written in the source language, is the authentic official version. Translations are offered solely for the convenience of the reader and must refer to the original text, which is the only legally valid text.
BlogInnovazione.it
Last Monday, the Financial Times announced a deal with OpenAI. FT licenses its world-class journalism…
Millions of people pay for streaming services, paying monthly subscription fees. It is common opinion that you…
Coveware by Veeam will continue to provide cyber extortion incident response services. Coveware will offer forensics and remediation capabilities…
Predictive maintenance is revolutionizing the oil & gas sector, with an innovative and proactive approach to plant management.…
