Monte Carlo Capital was founded in 2009 by former investment banker Ian Sosso, winner of the 2019 “Best European Early Stage Investor” award from EBAN, the Brussels-based European trade association for business angels representing the 30,000 European angel community with a presence in 50 countries.  Monte Carlo Capital combines the best features of business angels and venture capital. We invest via fund and via SPVs. We have been the Lead in many of our investments and are increasing our Co-Investments with some of the world’s leading VCs. Typical investments start at pre-seed/seed and we regularly follow on to Series A & Series B rounds.   Monte Carlo Capital invests across sectors, including Saas, Fintech, DeepTech and Health Care, in the US, Europe and the UK.  Our solo managing partner was a former investment banker, spending most of his career in Asia and the UK. He retired about 15 years ago, and set up his own angel group. After being quite successful, he decided to launch the fund (January this year). Located in Monaco.

Monte Carlo Capital

WillowWorks is an early-stage investment fund focusing on early-stage investments and strategic partnerships that deliver innovation to broad markets. It was established in 2016 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

WillowWorks

Break Trail Ventures is an early stage venture fund based in Columbus, OH and Boulder, CO.

Break Trail Ventures

G2VP invests in emerging technology companies that digitize traditional industries and drive market transformations. Tapping into global industries from transportation, energy and agriculture to manufacturing, and logistics, G2VP was founded around a multi-trillion-dollar trend: the digitization of industry. As this trend takes root, and industries worldwide transition from traditional analog to digital processes, G2VP sees tremendous opportunity for value creation, economic growth, and sector disruption. By aligning companies, purpose and profit, the company aims to unlock previously unidentified paths to sustainability and resource efficiency.

G2 Venture Partners

Triangle Peak Partners conducts private investments in companies where it can work with management and help create value. The firm has a deep background in venture capital and private equity investing in private and public technology, energy, and alternative energy companies. Triangle Peak focuses on Series B through PIPE stage deals.

Triangle Peak Partners

Osage University Partners is a venture capital firm focused on investing in startups that are commercializing university technologies. Osage partners with research universities to invest in their innovative startups shareing its investment profit with partner institutions. The firm invests in software, hardware, and life science companies at all stages of company development. To date, it has partnered with over 80 universities, including 36 of the top 50 U.S. institutions by research expenditures, and has invested in over 50 of their spinouts.

OUP (Osage University Partners)

JobsOhio is the state’s economic development organization charged with driving job creation and capital investment in Ohio through business attraction, retention and expansion efforts. Our team of industry experts understands the needs of growing businesses and supports them with the resources necessary to succeed.

JobsOhio

A dynamic network of visionary professionals dedicated to socially responsible and environmentally sustainable investing

Veritus Holdings

Wellington Management focuses on investment management. The company applies its full resources to meet the needs of the institutional clients they serve. Their investment approaches span equity, fixed income, currency, commodity, and alternative markets. They also offer asset allocation, multi-manager, and speciality approaches.

Wellington Management

Spark Growth Ventures is a mid to late stage, vertical-agnostic technology venture capital as well as a micro private equity firm. The firm was founded in 2018 by Hem Suri and is headquartered in San Diego, California, United States.

Spark Growth Ventures

Standard Investments is a venture capital firm concentrating on long-term investments in public markets spanning manufacturing, digital technologies, environmental technology, transportation and mobility, sustainability, and industrial sectors. The firm's focus lies on early-to-growth stage companies emphasizing technology and business model innovation, fostering data-driven approaches, customer-centricity, and environmental sustainability for businesses.

Standard Investments

AssetWatch

AssetWatch is a leader in proactive and predictive maintenance solutions, providing a rapidly deployable, end-to-end remote condition monitoring service. We help eliminate unplanned downtime for global manufacturers and simplify the predictive maintenance process by providing a network of wireless sensors and communication hubs, cutting-edge software, and condition monitoring engineers who condense and decipher the noise of data – making it more qualitative than just quantitative with expert prescriptive recommendations. By combining predictive analytics via machine learning in the software with the prescriptive insights of a certified expert, AssetWatch gives you way more than just the standard ''pass/fail''. We truly are a partner in the journey, helping change the culture of maintenance and reliability teams from reactive to proactive.

AssetWatch (formerly known as Nikola Labs), is a provider of continuous condition monitoring solutions designed for proactive maintenance. Its platform engages in continuous monitoring across clients’ assets with the aim of minimizing the loss of production and costly repairs in the case of defects. It also provides predictive insight to enable proactive maintenance.

Using data and automation to achieve 24/7 production.

Smart Factory

AssetWatch: Predictive Maintenance Solutions Company Raises $38 Million

AssetWatch (formerly known as Nikola Labs), is a provider of continuous condition monitoring solutions designed for proactive maintenance. Its platform engages in continuous monitoring across clients’ assets with the aim of minimizing the loss of production and costly repairs in the case of defects. It also provides predictive insight to enable proactive maintenance.The platform, which consists of sensors and the AssetWatch cloud-based software, transforms industrial maintenance based on a detect, resolve, report, and learn approach and provides a centralized view for facility and corporate leaders. AssetWatch provides continuous vibration solutions, route-based vibration solutions, oil analysis, and integration services to its customers.Key customers and partnershipsAssetWatch serves customers like Scotts Miracle-Gro, West Rock, Berry Global, Sonoco, Sherwin Williams, and Worthington Industries.In April 2024, the company partnered with Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI), an IT solutions company, to expand industrial maintenance services in Japan.

Avathon (formerly SparkCognition) offers a suite of AI-powered data analytics solutions for businesses, specializing in the industrial sector. The company’s offerings include: 1) Industrial AI Suite, which enables users to connect datasets with configurable AI models, identify and contextualize risks to equipment, analyze maintenance actions, monitor performance, and visualize multi-asset systems, without requiring coding experience, and 2) Visual AI Advisor, which leverages computer vision to analyze real-time data from existing camera infrastructure for a number of different use cases, such as safety monitoring, visual inspection, and machine monitoring.&nbsp;In May 2023, the company launched the Generative AI Suite, a solution specifically tailored for the industrial sector, which enables users to build and deploy custom large language models (LLMs) on either private or on-premise cloud environments. Users also autonomously augment data sets by generating text, images, audio, and other signals and create imagery for use in simulated real-world environments. It claims to&nbsp;reduce the foundational information needed for decision-making by up to 20x.Since 2021, the company has acquired a number of companies to further develop its product offering. This includes Indian visual AI startup&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9370?industryIds=6">Integration Wizards</a> (March 2022) to expand its intellectual property (IP) portfolio to improve vision capabilities as well as digital knowledge platform Maana (July 2021), software developer for the renewable energy industry Ensemble Energy (May 2021), and financial technology company AIM2 (February 2021).&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34997">In October 2024,&nbsp;</a>Avathon unveiled a new system-level AI platform that provides solutions for managing and monitoring critical industrial infrastructure. The AI platform addresses various industrial issues, including maximizing the uptime of capital-intensive assets, enabling efficient manufacturing ramp-up, and ensuring worker safety in industrial settings.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsSparkCognition’s clientele comprises large companies such as Boeing, Hitachi, and British Petroleum. It has also built partnerships with Google for cloud platform services, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise to offer AI predictive maintenance on HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems, and OSIsoft to integrate SparkCognition’s machine learning technology with OSIsoft’s PI system to improve data and process data analytics.&nbsp;

Avathon

Sight Machine offers a manufacturing data platform that captures and contextualizes data from factories to deliver a system-wide view of the manufacturing process as well as individual assets. The platform transforms raw plant data as well as data from machines of various manufacturers into a standardized data foundation and provides actionable insights for a range of use cases such as predictive maintenance, quality improvement, and capacity utilization. Users can analyze all assets, data sources, and processes by creating digital twins, thereby improving processes, quality, and productivity.&nbsp;In October 2022, Sight Machine introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13696?industryIds=6">Blueprint</a>, a tool developed in collaboration with NVIDIA and Microsoft, which uses AI for high-speed, automated data labeling. The company claims that this solution enables manufacturers to analyze up to 100x more of their data than traditional methods.&nbsp; Key customers and partnershipsSight Machine caters to at least 15 verticals, such as food and beverage, electronics, and automotive. Its global clientele includes Fortune 500 companies such as Nissan, Heineken, Westrock Co., and Asian Paints.&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21955">In September 2023</a>, Sight Machine partnered with LS Electric, a power and automation solutions provider, to create an AI-driven Big Data analytics platform tailored for the manufacturing and energy sectors. In December 2023, the company went on to partner with Teamviewer, a remote collaboration solutions provider, to offer a joint product that combines the latter’s remote connectivity and industrial AR solutions with its real-time data and analysis for industrial processes.&nbsp;Sight Machine has established partnerships with large global companies such as Microsoft, Google, Databricks, Siemens, and AWS to integrate with their data analytics platforms and Fujitsu to help with wide deployments. In July 2023, the platform also became a certified Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing partner and released Factory CoPilot, integrating its Manufacturing Data Platform with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to offer GenAI capabilities for manufacturing analysis and real-time insights. The company went on to launch the<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33441"> Sight Machine connector for Databricks</a> (in September 2024), to integrate its manufacturing data platform with the latter’s data intelligence platform.

Sight Machine

Overview offers smart cameras and AI to enable users to monitor manufacturing equipment and robots and identify defects in real time before significant damage or downtime is incurred. The technology has a repository of machine data so that there is a traceable visual record of all units.&nbsp;With AI, the cause of production issues and quality concerns can be identified either on-site or remotely. The company claims over time, the deep learning computer vision algorithms allow for any sudden substantial increases in production and improved yields. Moreover, it reportedly offers 100% visual traceability and an over 99.9% uptime.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, the solution was used by a number of enterprises, including Schaeffler, ThermoFischer, Honda, Caterpillar, and Tyson.&nbsp;

Overview

Bright Machines combines robotics, machine learning, and computer vision to provide automation applications for the electronics manufacturing industry. Its flagship product is the “Bright Machines Microfactory,” a pre-integrated, programmable assembly line that can be deployed in existing and new production facilities. The Microfactory runs on the company's proprietary “Brightware” cloud-based software platform, offering a scalable solution that enables manufacturers to enhance supply chain resilience and adapt production capacity according to market demand. This software-defined manufacturing allows factories to change the products that they manufacture if needed. The company offers its service on a subscription-based microfactory-as-a-service (MaaS) business model.The company reportedly generated USD 83 million in revenue in 2021. In May 2021, Bright Machines reported that its revenue doubled each year since its inception (2018) and forecasts a 5-year CAGR (2020-2025) of over 84%.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsBright Machines served over 40 manufacturing companies as of October 2022.The company collaborated with Microsoft Azure in May 2024 to leverage the latter’s infrastructure to deliver a full-stack environment for all stages of the manufacturing lifecycle.The company also has distribution/sales partnerships with Anstar Corporation (April 2021), SMT Capital (April 2021), MaRC Technologies (May 2021), PAC Global (May 2021), Restronics (June 2021), <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3618">BROCK Electronics</a> (June 2021), <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4740">Murray Percival</a> (July 2021), <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4412">Competitive Edge Manufacturing Equipment</a> (CEME; July 2021).Key competitors: None comparable (Bright Machines is the only company in the smart factory industry that offers microfactories-as-a-service, which combines intelligent software with adaptive hardware to automate manufacturing processes.)

Bright Machines

Augury offers AI-based predictive maintenance solutions. It uses wireless halo sensors to record the vibration, temperature, and magnetism of machines and upload them to the cloud, where AI will be used to diagnose faults and predict potential malfunctions. The system can predict failures and provide early, actionable insights on equipment status, allowing companies to plan maintenance more effectively. Augury offers Machine Health solutions for Critical Assets (MH CR) and Supporting Equipment (MH SE).&nbsp;Furthermore, it offers a warranty policy (one-of-a-kind in the predictive maintenance field) for up to USD 100,000 of repairs and replacements if the software fails to successfully predict machine faults. The company reported that its machine health (predictive maintenance) solutions can deliver an ROI of 3x–10x. In December 2023, the company launched a product loss guarantee solution, in partnership with HSB, which covers a broader range of production-related assets, including protection against production loss due to mechanical failures.&nbsp;In May 2022, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10286">Augury acquired Seebo,</a> another Israeli company that offers predictive quality and yield solutions for manufacturers to identify process-driven inefficiencies.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAugury has built a customer base consisting of companies such as Hershey’s, Colgate-Palmolive, Grundfos, Heineken, Danone, and Bausch Health. The company announced an insurance plan for its customers in 2020, partly as a strategy to attract more customers. Augury’s Machine Health Solutions are integrated with PTC’s ThingWorx IoT through a partnership in July 2020 and are available in the PTC Marketplace. In October 2021, it partnered with Baker Hughes, a provider of energy technology solutions, which integrated Augury’s solutions into its System 1 software and asset performance management (APM) solutions. It went on to integrate Baker Hughes’ “Ranger Pro” wireless condition monitoring sensor and “Cordant” gateway into its platform in June 2024.&nbsp;In November 2023, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23991">Augury partnered with IFS Ultimo</a>, a provider of cloud-based enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions, to offer machine health monitoring and asset management workflows for industries. It went on to partner with DSV, a logistics solutions provider, in March 2024, to introduce a new Parts As a Service (PaaS) solution. The solution utilizes machine health to predict machine faults and enables users to automate the procurement of replacement parts.

Augury

Companies that provide robotic fleet management software, robotic automation software, and inspection software.

Companies that provide an industrial IoT platform across factories as the primary offering.

Companies that provide cobots, sorting/ picking robotics, modular production robotics, and microfactories.

Companies that focus on data analytics for operations streamlining and process optimization, and may offer predictive maintenance.

Companies that provide autonomous mobile robots (AMR) or self-driving vehicles (SDV) used in manufacturing/ factory operations.

Companies that monitor the manufacturing equipment and assembly lines.

Companies that provide predictive maintenance as a primary offering. 

Creates digital twins of assets and processes to help manufacturers improve processes, quality, and productivity

Connected devices, sensors, IoT, and analytics are used to optimize factory operations

Uses advanced robotics, AMRs, and related software to improve the efficiency of factory operations

Uses connected devices and sensors to gather data—IIoT, predictive analysis, and equipment inspection

Uses AI/ML to analyze data for predictive maintenance and AI-based vision systems for line inspections

5G standard allows for faster reaction times and supports high connection densities

Uses edge computing for data processing at the edge

Some companies in the predictive maintenance space uses generative AI to generate possible alternative scenarios

<div>
 
 AssetWatch, a company offering constant condition monitoring solutions, has gathered $38 million in a Series B funding round. The round was spearheaded by Wellington Management, and saw participation from other firms including G2 Venture Partners, Triangle Peak Partners, Standard Investments, Osage University Partners, and JobsOhio Growth Capital Fund.
 The intended use for the acquired funds is to hasten innovation and back the business' expansion.
 
</div>

AssetWatch

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