Target Global is a prominent European technology investment firm with a significant presence in the venture capital landscape, boasting over €3 billion in assets under management.  The firm operates out of key tech hubs including London, Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Abu Dhabi, and has a rich portfolio featuring some of Europe's most successful tech companies such as Revolut, Auto1, Copper, Delivery Hero, Docplanner, and Rapyd. Founding and Growth Target Global was established in 2015 by Shmuel Chafets and Yaron Valler, who brought a wealth of experience from their tenure at Hasso Plattner Ventures. Their professional partnership dates back 15 years to their time at Giza Venture Capital, a trailblazer in Israel's investment ecosystem, where they honed their investment acumen and industry foresight. Investment Philosophy and Impact Target Global stands out in the European tech industry for its diverse team and its ability to identify and capitalize on unique opportunities. The firm's knack for recognizing potential in the early stages of Germany's tech economy led to the emergence of several unicorns in the 2010s. As the European tech industry evolves, Target Global remains at the forefront, seeking out innovative companies like Robovision, Saleor, and Finom. These recent investments reflect the firm's commitment to supporting cutting-edge technology and business models. Fundraising Successes Target Global's fundraising prowess is evident in its six investment funds, which have collectively raised significant capital. The funds range from Early Stage Funds, focusing on nascent startups, to Growth Funds that support more mature companies scaling their operations. The firm's co-investment strategy has led to over €1 billion in capital deployment across a diverse array of partnerships. Backing and Achievements With the backing of investors such as FERI, UBS, Allianz X, Mubadala, and Hermes GPE, Target Global has cemented its reputation as a trusted and successful investment firm. Its portfolio spans over 140 companies at various development stages, with a focus on those targeting trillion-dollar markets. Just a few of the many notable companies in the firm’s portfolio include: - Tarabut, MENA’s leading open banking platform, which was recently featured in Forbes Middle East’s list of Top 50 Fintech Companies. - Flo Health, an AI-driven women’s health product, which is the world’s top health and fitness app by downloads. - Robovision, an easy-to-use AI-driven computer vision platform for users to develop their own deep-learning-based solutions. - Enter, a German company that helps homeowners and businesses reduce their carbon footprint. Target Global's track record includes support for 15 unicorn companies, over 20 exits, and 7 IPOs, showcasing its ability to drive growth and success in the European tech ecosystem. The team, comprised of individuals with founder and operator backgrounds, continues to pursue exceptional opportunities to expand the firm's portfolio and influence. Target Global's journey from its inception to its current status as a key player in European venture capital is marked by strategic investments, a commitment to diversity, and a deep understanding of the tech industry's dynamics. With a clear vision for the future, Target Global is poised to continue its role in shaping the next wave of European tech giants.

Target Global

Astanor Ventures is a venture capital firm focusing on entrepreneurs regenerating the food, blue ocean economy, and agriculture sector. The firm targeting technology-enabled companies across the agri-food value chain, leveraging disruptive technologies to bring about a future of food that is nourishing, regenerative, trusted, and ultra-fresh. It rings together capital, deep sector knowledge, and a strong network of entrepreneurs, impact investors, technologists, scientists, farmers, chefs, policymakers, and food lovers to give rise to a future of food that is nourishing, regenerative, scalable, trusted, and delicious.

Astanor Ventures

Red River West promotes the international take-off of outstanding European Tech companies by providing significant financial firepower and game changing hands-on support in EU & the US

Red River West

Robovision

Robovision serves as the adaptive engine and central platform for image-to-action AI solutions, allowing seamless AI integration into dynamic environments without the need for specialized AI expertise. It operates both in the cloud and on the edge, offering users a comprehensive control center for their AI vision technology. For customers, Robovision ensures the ability to centrally manage AI vision, significantly reduces downtime in critical automations, and facilitates global scalability of AI solutions. It also enables independence from third-party implementations for enhancements and maximizes the return on investment in AI technologies.

<div>Based in Belgium, Robovision offers a no-code platform that enables machinery manufacturers and production managers to create and manage computer vision AI models. Users can upload their data and create and train custom models for image classification, object detection, instance segmentation, semantic segmentation, and anomaly detection.</div>

Using data and automation to achieve 24/7 production.

Smart Factory

RoboVision

Belgian computer vision startup Robovision eyes U.S. expansion to address labor shortages

<div>
 
 Based in Belgium, Robovision offers a no-code platform that enables machinery manufacturers and production managers to create and manage computer vision AI models. Users can upload their data and create and train custom models for image classification, object detection, instance segmentation, semantic segmentation, and anomaly detection.
 
 
 Moreover, RoboVison offers the Edge AI product that enables users to integrate AI models into edge devices for running on-premises automation applications. The edge devices can capture and upload data to the platform and are designed for low latency applications in a variety of physical environments.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 RoboVision caters to the agriculture, manufacturing (including food manufacturing and semiconductors), healthcare (covering areas like medical imaging and life sciences), and retail industries. As of March 2024,Robovision&rsquo;s notable partners included Hitachi, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Delaware, ISO Group, VDL Groep, Prodrive, and Mitsubishi Electric.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In March 2024, 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27996">
 Robovision raised USD 42 million
 </a>
 in new funding led by Target Global and Astanor Ventures to expand into the US market, grow in existing markets, and support its R&amp;D activities.
 
</div>

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>
 
 AI-based computer vision platform Robovision has successfully raised USD 42 million in a funding round led by Target Global and Astanor Ventures, also supported by Red River West. This new injection of funds increases the company's total funding to USD 65 million.
 Robovision plans to allot the funds to its expansion plans into the US market, as well as bolstering growth in its existing markets. The funding will also support further research and development activities. Furthermore, the company intends to establish new offices in key locations including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, and several parts of Asia.
 Operating from Belgium, Robovision provides a unique no-code platform that empowers machinery manufacturers and production managers to create and manage AI models for computer vision. Users have the ability to upload their data and develop custom models trained for image classification, object detection, instance segmentation, semantic segmentation, and anomaly detection.
 
</div>

RoboVision

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless