Data analytics company Oden Technologies has closed a cool $10m (£7.6m) Series A led by Atomico.
Oden was founded in London and also has an office in the US. The new funds will be used to grow its engineering teams in New York and sales teams in the manufacturing hubs of Illinois, Ohio, and Texas. It will also be used to improve its R&D efforts.
The $10m cash injection means the total funding raised by Oden now stands at $16m (£12.1m). The company provides IoT and AI-powered analytics to help manufacturers eliminate production waste and increase output.
Existing investors EQT Ventures, Inbox Capital, and Seed investors also contributed to the round.
Founded in 2006, Atomico invests in disruptive technology companies from Series A onwards. It’s investment portfolio includes Supercell, Klarna, Stripe, ofo, Lilium, 6Wunderkinder and The Climate Corporation.
Atomico CEO, and co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström will join the company’s board as a result of the investment.
Zennström commented on the news: “Major areas of inefficiency still predominate throughout the manufacturing sector, which has remained relatively untouched by digital technology. We believe that’s about to change. The combination of IIoT, Big Data analytics, cloud computing and machine learning marks a new era for industry, by not only unlocking efficiencies and reducing waste of materials, but enabling smaller batch sizes, more personalised products and greater innovation too.
“Willem and Peter have both the scale of vision and exceptional ability to execute to be in the vanguard of this shift – and the potential to transform manufacturing,” he added.
Oden claims it’s cloud-based data analytics platform can immediately deliver actionable insights, more quickly than its competitors.
The company combines wireless industrial IoT and proprietary cloud-based analytics into one platform for manufacturers to monitor production from any device. The data which is then streamed to the cloud platform includes real-time factory floor monitoring.
Willem Sundblad, co-founder and CEO, Oden Technologies, said the company want to democratize access to data analytics, making it easy to collect and action for anyone in the factory: “Our vision is for the manufacturers to achieve ‘perfect production’, make things not only better, but faster, cheaper, and with less waste. Traditionally manufacturers did not have access to the right data and insights to make factories more efficient and productive.
“What Oden provides is data that is transparent, precise, instantaneous and above all usable, empowering our customers to build smarter factories and bring about a manufacturing renaissance,” he added.
To support its advancements in machine learning and AI, Oden has hired Deepak Turaga, Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University, as VP of Data Science. Deepak previously worked at IBM.