Located in Träslövsläge, Ekkono Solutions raises €3 million in growth capital from Etteplan Oyj, the Finnish company providing engineering services. Etteplan joins existing investors by acquiring 20% of the company and will become a reseller of Ekkono’s software, enabling product companies to quickly develop customized smart functions that are self-learning, predictive and sustainable. The startup was born out of seven years of machine learning research at the University of Borås. The capital will be invested in the company’s growth. With this strategic partnership, they are targeting to accelerate the fourth industrial revolution of machinery.
Ekkono Raises €3 Million, and Adds Strategic Investor
Ekkono Solutions AB, a global pioneer in Edge Machine Learning software, today announced the closing of a €3M funding round. As part of this funding, Ekkono’s existing investors are joined by the Finnish technology service company Etteplan Oyj (HEL:ETTE) who acquires 20% of the company. In addition to the investment, Etteplan will resell Ekkono’s software to drive the fourth industrial revolution at their customers in machine and equipment manufacturing.
“Etteplan is a perfect investor for us”, says Jon Lindén, CEO of Ekkono. “Not only do we secure growth capital to elevate Ekkono to the next level, but we also extend our reach to more customers through a partner that can deliver comprehensive solutions and provide credibility to a disruptive technology like ours. We have an overlap in customers, which shows that both we and Etteplan work with the industrial frontrunners of digital transformation.”
“Digital technology offers Etteplan a huge growth potential”, says Juha Näkki, President and CEO of Etteplan. “This is an exciting step for us as we invest in a technology start-up company, but we found such a great product and a strong team at Ekkono that it convinced us to move ahead.”
The proceeds will primarily be used to accelerate business growth.
“The last two years have been tough as the pandemic has been bad for new product innovation”, says Jon Lindén. “A lot of customer projects have been postponed. But we’ve seen a dramatic increase in activity since mid-Q1 this year, which started paying off in Q2. Now, it’s time to accelerate and capitalize on our first mover advantage. It’s a testimony to our positioning, team, technology, and achievements that we can do this funding round under the current market conditions.”
Ekkono was founded in 2016 based on the results from over seven years of research at the University of Borås. The technology is mature and proven by several global top-tier OEMs who are customers and use the technology for personalized predictive maintenance and performance optimization. Ekkono’s technology drives the twin transition of digitalization and sustainability through smart, self-learning, customized, and predictive features on everything from motors, compressors, and heat exchangers, to trucks, turbines, hospital ventilators and air filtration solutions. The key to all of this is that every individual product learns, while in operations, how, where and for what it is being used, to accommodate it. This drives the automated mass-customization of things, which empowers the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 to take off.
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