Sandvik has acquired a minority stake in the privately owned American software company Oqton, a leading provider of AI-powered manufacturing solutions that allows manufacturers to manage, optimize, and automate their manufacturing workflows.
“This investment is in line with our strategic agenda to broaden our offering in digital manufacturing. We are looking forward to working with Oqton and finding ways to expand our offering for increased customer productivity by creating new products that take advantage of Sandvik’s extensive know-how about manufacturing processes and Oqton’s AI-powered manufacturing solutions”, says Stefan Widing, President and CEO of Sandvik.
Oqton provides a secure end-to-end cloud-based manufacturing platform that links data across the complete manufacturing ecosystem, from design to production, to logistics. Their open and agnostic cloud-based platform enables manufacturers to operate agile factories and manage complex product mixes, with lower inventory and a simplified supply chain.
“Oqton’s solution targets inefficiencies and waste in the manufacturing workflow. We believe that our relationship with Oqton will give us further opportunities to define and reduce waste throughout the entire manufacturing process. We share the same desire to automate workflows and make our customers more efficient”, says Mathias Johansson, President of the Design & Planning Automation division in Sandvik Manufacturing Solutions.
Founded in 2017, Oqton has 60 employees, the corporate base in San Francisco, USA, and three R&D centers located in Belgium, Denmark and China.
The relationship with Oqton will be managed by Sandvik Manufacturing Solutions’ division Design & Planning Automation, within the business area Sandvik Manufacturing and Machining Solutions. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
In a seperate Oqton press release the company announced announces that it has raised over $40M in a Series A financing round, led by Fortino Capital, a leading B2B software investor, by PMV, the regional Flemish investment fund, and by Sandvik, a global engineering group. The founding team (Samir Hanna and Ben Schrauwen) and several angel investors, including Carl Bass (former CEO Autodesk), Dries Buytaert (Drupal and Acquia), and Peter Mercelis (Layerwise) also participated in the round. The financing will be used to further develop its platform, while expanding its commercial partnerships in multiple domains and verticals (Additive manufacturing, Robotic welding, CNC machining).
