Few industries generate more data than factories—from sensors and pumps to motors and compressors. Today, Oden Technologies announced it has raised a $28.5 million Series B, led by Nordstjernan Growth, to help manufacturers use AI to turn all that data into helpful recommendations that get machine operators up to speed—literally.
The result, Oden CEO Willem Sundblad told Fortune, could finally fulfill the long-awaited promise of what has been called Industry 4.0—or the full integration of digital technologies into manufacturing—and, in the future, directly link data insights to AI-powered, autonomous manufacturing processes. But at the moment, the biggest challenges facing the industry are massive labor shortages and high employee turnover, thanks to tough job conditions and heavy competition from companies like Amazon. That means manufacturers often need to get new, less experienced machine operators on board quickly, and real-time, industry-specific information—gleaned from billions of complex data points—can help them succeed.
“There is so much data that people can’t actually analyze it,” said Sundblad, who cofounded the now New York–based company in 2014 with Peter Brand, who now serves as chief commercial officer. “It can be things like temperatures, pressures, flow meters, different chemical additives, weight, even really down to the true nitty-gritty of motor revolutions per minute and screw speeds.”
Manufacturing data turns into predictive recommendations
Experienced workers take years to learn their machines, gaining what Sundblad calls “fingertip feel,” but new operators often don’t have that luxury. By gleaning AI-driven insights from manufacturing data, they can get predictive recommendations such as how to decrease material or energy costs or increase speed while maintaining quality and dealing with company-defined constraints. For some clients, the results have been significant, with factory line speeds increasing by more than 40%, said Sundblad.
Besides increased productivity, Oden’s AI-powered recommendations have also made the job less stressful for machine operators, he added. “There’s one example from the paper industry, where when you’re making things, you can’t know whether what you’re making is good or bad while you’re making it,” he explained. “You take a sample into the lab and find out five hours later if it was good or bad.”
For the operator, if they found out that the run was bad, “they’re in for a world of hurt because that was really expensive,” Sundblad said. Oden’s real-time AI models, which use historical data combined with supervised machine learning, predict the quality of the product as it’s being made, “so when the operator makes a change, they see that instantly—that changes the stress level for them.”
The future is autonomous systems with humans in the loop
In the future, Sundblad says, Oden’s AI-driven recommendations will help power autonomous systems with humans in the loop—its AI-powered insights platform could serve as a go-between for operators and machines. “I know some people that are taking a full-stack approach to autonomous manufacturing where they’re building new factories from ground up with autonomy in mind,” he said. “We go to the assets that are already there, layering this intelligence layer on top.”
But right now, he said, it’s all about helping machine operators “so that those jobs are better, they are performing better, they get paid better, they are safer.” In the future, as autonomous systems become more widespread across industries, “eventually, those people will do higher-value tasks.”
New investors in Oden’s new funding round include Klarna founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s investment company, Flat Capital; Oden customer INX International Ink; and Recurring Capital Partners, with participation from almost all existing investors, including Atomico and EQT Ventures. The company’s latest valuation was not disclosed.
Oden, whose customers also include Southwire, Sonoco, Viakable, Greif, Teknor Apex, and Lake Cable, competes in the manufacturing data analytics space with companies including Braincube and TwinThread.
