Participated · Equity · Jan 2026

United Manufacturing Hub (UMH) offers a Unified Namespace platform that connects machines, sensors, and IT systems through standardized interfaces, cleans and contextualizes the information, and serves it as a single source of truth for any manufacturing application. By replacing point-to-point integrations, the solution enables rapid deployment of operational KPIs, energy tracking, condition monitoring, alerting, and industrial AI use cases. Customers such as HiPP, Edeka, and Böllhoff report going from setup to measurable impact within weeks and adding new data sources in hours rather than weeks. The company positions itself as the foundational data layer required for AI-driven factories, aiming to become the world’s leading industrial data company. Its open-source approach targets both data engineers and shop-floor engineers, promoting interoperability across legacy factory software. Financially, UMH has just secured €5 million in new capital to deepen product development, widen connectivity, and scale its platform.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2025

assemblean, founded in 2021 as a spin-off from the Heinz Nixdorf Institute in Paderborn, offers a digital platform that automates procurement, assembly and quality-control workflows for contract manufacturing. The company’s platform aims to reduce costs (reportedly delivering parts up to one-third cheaper) and shorten lead times by offering a broad range of manufacturing processes on demand. assemblean serves over 100 customers across industries and positions itself as a more comprehensive, automated alternative to traditional manufacturers and on‑demand platforms. The startup was supported early on by garage33 (Paderborn University’s start-up center) and the Founders Foundation. With the Seed investment, assemblean plans to enhance platform functionality, integrate an automatic quality‑control system and expand operations to handle larger-scale contracts. Co-founder Dr. Ing. Xiaojun Yang emphasizes the company’s mission to create infrastructure for manufacturing anything at scale via its user-friendly automated platform.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2023

German-based Unchained Robotics automates industrial processes with a unified software platform and its MalocherBot turnkey robotics cell. Its LUNA OS is a standardized control system that integrates robots from various manufacturers, described as an operating system for factory robots and designed to be as easy to use as a smartphone. The company’s online platform lets customers search for, find, and integrate robots quickly without prior programming experience. MalocherBot is positioned as a flexible, no-specialist deployment option suitable for SMEs as well as large firms. More than 300 companies across Europe use the solution, including Vorwerk. The company is accelerating expansion into the U.S. and is using new capital to scale internationally and push toward a global robotics standard. Financially, Unchained Robotics has just closed an €8.5M Series A extension to support this growth. Unchained Robotics provides a plug-and-play automation platform that can automate common manual processes in logistics and metalworking within a few hours. Its MalocherBot product is already in use worldwide after a few weeks, enabled by a software platform and an online marketplace for searching and selecting automation. The platform supports integrations with over a dozen robotics manufacturers, aiming to give SMEs broad-based access to standard robotics. The company positions its technology as a low-barrier solution to compensate for skilled labor shortages in industry. Unchained Robotics plans to expand sales and services to meet growing demand and to broaden MalocherBot applications. The article identifies the company as a German startup and reports its total funding to date.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2011

Quixey builds mobile search technology that helps users find content within apps and jump directly to in‑app actions. It has developed capabilities to take users from search results to personalized actions, such as showing nearby friends in Facebook or bringing up a Spotify playlist. Founder Tomer Kagan said the technology enables users to find actions inside apps and go directly to the answer they want. The company raised an additional $30M in debt financing to accelerate its go‑to‑market strategy. Quixey has previously raised $173.8M in funding, most recently a $60M round last year, from investors including Alibaba Group, SoftBank, USVP, Atlantic Bridge and Goldman Sachs. The new debt was provided by existing investors, according to a company spokesperson, and was disclosed in a regulatory filing first reported by CNBC. Quixey develops mobile search technology that goes beyond app discovery to find content and core actions buried inside applications via deep linking. Its platform can surface in-app results—examples cited include returning Yelp reviews or Groupon deals when searching for local restaurants. The company powers 100 million queries monthly and counts partners and customers such as Ask.com, Sprint, Skyfire, DuckDuckGo, Microsoft, StarHub, Alibaba.com, and Nokia. Quixey has launched a sponsored ads product similar to Google AdWords as a revenue driver and runs a developer-focused AppURL initiative to promote deep-linking. Leadership says the company is focused on the U.S., India and China and expects new overseas investors to open additional opportunities and partnerships. To date the company has raised capital that supports its expansion and product initiatives. Quixey has built a search engine to tackle app discovery by letting users search for functionality and content inside mobile apps. It powers app search for partners including Sprint, Ask.com, browser makers and OEMs. The company is handling more than 100 million queries per month. Quixey is expanding beyond app discovery into app content discovery and has launched the developer-focused AppURL initiative to make apps work more like the web. Management signaled a consumer-facing product is imminent, with a possible Android integration to surface in-app content. The company recently introduced a sponsored-ads feature to begin generating revenue and has about 100 advertisers signed. The new funding will be used to ramp engineering hires and expand internationally; the company currently has an ~80-strong headcount. Quixey builds an app search engine focused on improving app discoverability by powering partners’ backend app-search products rather than running a consumer-facing service. The company uses novel data-collection and algorithmic techniques that analyze the world around apps — mentions, reviews and contextual signals — rather than relying solely on app metadata. Quixey works with partners such as OEMs, mobile carriers, web platforms, browsers and search engines, and cannot disclose specific customers due to partner agreements. It is expanding internationally and plans to roll out its app search engine in a dozen more languages. Quixey has been rapidly scaling its team, growing from 6 to 30 employees in the past year and planning to surpass 60 by year-end with hires on its data, technical and research teams. The company is also exploring app discovery in the app-enabled auto industry and expects additional partner-driven announcements in the coming months. Quixey builds a "functional search" engine that scans major app stores and crawls blogs, review sites, forums, and social media to determine what apps do. Its search returns apps for queries like "baseball scores" and lets users filter by platform. The engine supports Windows and Mac apps, iGoogle, extensions, and mobile platforms rather than being limited to iOS and Android. Quixey can also power search for other app stores, search engines, and websites to broaden distribution. The company will use its new funding to continue securing partnerships with app stores and other large third-party app resources, and it has more than 25 potential partnerships in the pipeline. Financially, Quixey closed a $3.8 million Series A and had previously raised $400,000, bringing disclosed total funding to $4.2 million.