Oden Technologies Ltd., a provider of artificial intelligence-driven solutions for the manufacturing industry, announced Wednesday that the company raised $28.5 million in a new round led by Nordstjernan Growth to solve pain points in manufacturing productivity using AI and data analytics products.

New investors joining the Series B round include Flat Capital, Recurring Capital Partners and Oden customer INX International Ink Co. Almost all existing investors including Atomico and EQT Ventures also participated in the round. Atomico led Oden’s $10 million Series A round in 2018 and the current funding brings the total raised by the company to $58.7 million.

Oden said that it would use the new capital to develop new AI products to help solve issues facing the global manufacturing industry including productivity issues, operational inefficiencies and data inaccuracy.

The company’s flagship AI-driven product is Process AI, an artificial intelligence-enabled prescriptive process solution that provides recommendations to machine operators that adjust in real time based on organized goals. It relies on Oden’s already existing data ingestion and analytics capabilities, which can process numerous data points from every part of a factory or manufacturing plant to create feedback on operations.

According to Oden, Process AI provides operators with achievable recommendations that will allow them to save money, increase production, create efficiencies and more. All are based on predictive metrics based on real-time information taken from sensors from furnaces, manufacturing equipment and other systems.

Citing economic data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oden noted that the manufacturing industry has fallen into a labor productivity plateau. The company claims that the best way to overcome this is to strike at industry pain points such as improving data accuracy, building on the distribution of domain knowledge and providing better recommendations for efficient operations.

The company cited its work with manufacturers such as Sonoco Products Co., Southwire Co. LLC and Viakable Manufacturing LLC as examples of its AI-enabled capabilities to reduce waste at scale. Oden said that by applying AI-enabled processes to their most complex manufacturing systems data work, operators were able to greatly improve productivity.

“The labor and productivity challenges facing manufacturers are existential,” said Willem Sundblad, chief executive and co-founder of Oden Technologies. “Operators are the most critical part of the process but are the most underserved. With our AI applications, we’re able to give the front line the tools to be the heroes of this industrial revolution.”

Oden claimed that operator adoption of its product has been substantial, with over 80% of runs using recommendations with enabled lines, which increased speeds by up to 40% for some customers.

The operational efficiencies generated by applying AI to manufacturing data attracted Oden customer INX International Ink to participate in this funding round.

“We learned Oden provides significant value through real-time manufacturing data,” said Jim Kochanny, CEO of INX. “We are already seeing value and increased performance on the front line from features related to machine learning and AI.” 

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