Digital manufacturing startup Bright Machines Inc. is the latest venture capital-funded startup set to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company.

Bright Machines will merge with SCVX Corp. in a deal that values the company at $1.1 billion and a post-transaction equity value of $1.6 billion. The transaction is expected to provide Bright Machines with up to $435 million in gross cash proceeds, including $230 million in cash held in trust from SCVX and private investment in public equity of $205 million.

PIPE investors include XN, Hudson Bay Master Fund, SB Management (a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp.), Fidelity Management & Research and Alyeska Investment Group. The funds raised in the deal will be used to accelerate the company’s growth, including expansion into new markets and the development of additional value-added software in areas including production analytics and quality inspection.

Founded in 2018, Bright Machines combines flexible factory robots with intelligent software, production data and machine learning. With an aim to eliminate manual labor from manufacturing electronic devices by combining robots and new software, the company’s software-defined manufacturing platform is said to help customers innovate faster to meet the growing demands of a new era in manufacturing.

“At Bright Machines, our mission has been clear from the start: to bring software-defined intelligence down to the factory floor and enable our customers to effortlessly modernize their manufacturing operations,” Amar Hanspal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Bright Machines, said in a statement. “Our industrial automation platform… allows even the most traditional manufacturing companies to quickly and easily deploy flexible automation solutions at scale.”

The company, which has more than 500 employees, says it has 25 global, blue-chip customers that span essential industries, including network infrastructure, data centers, automotive, consumer products, medical devices and industrial equipment. Notable customers include Asteelflash Group, Flex Ltd., United Equipment Accessories Inc., Diagnostics for the Real World Ltd., Argonaut Manufacturing Services Inc., BMW, and All Quality and Services Inc.

According to data from Crunchbase, Bright Machines has raised $179 million in venture capital coming into its SPAC merger. Investors include Geodesic Capital, Lux Capital, Flex, Balyansy Asset Management and Eclipse Ventures.

Photo: Bright Machines