Led · Equity · Jan 2021

Cumulus Digital Systems builds the Internet of Tools platform that collects data from digitally enabled tools in the field to provide real‑time quality assurance and progress tracking for industrial maintenance and construction. Its flagship product, the patented Smart Torque System (STS), delivers real‑time visibility into productivity and work quality during safety‑critical bolting activities and has been deployed at energy facilities and data centers in multiple countries. Customers have used the platform to virtually eliminate leaks caused by work‑related accidents, reduce quality control and data analysis costs by 60%, and save field workers hours of paperwork and idle time each day. The company positions its platform as a solution to paper‑based processes, miscommunication, and rework that drive accidents, CO2 releases, and costly unplanned downtime. Cumulus will use the $8M strategic growth capital to expand sales and customer success teams in North America and Southeast Asia and to grow its engineering team to add new capabilities to the platform. Founded in 2018 as a spin‑out from Shell, Cumulus is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts and serves customers around the world. Cumulus operates a cloud-hosted platform that collects data from digitally-enabled tools to provide a single source of truth for real-time quality assurance and progress tracking. Its flagship product, the Smart Torque System (STS), pairs a Cumulus Control Center with a tablet application called TorqueFit that communicates with Bluetooth-enabled digital tools in the field. STS targets safety-critical bolting activities, replacing many manual inspections with software-driven verification to improve speed, accountability, and work quality. The system is operational at six facilities across the United States, Canada, and Singapore, with more than 50 sites on six continents in the deployment pipeline. Cumulus reports the system can reduce data review and quality-assurance costs by as much as 60% and achieve better than a 99% pass rate during leak testing, reducing downtime costs. The company recently closed a $4.5 million seed financing to support broader deployments and product growth.