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Vivid Machines says its full-stack system integrates software program and robotics to ship high-quality merchandise. | Supply: Vivid Machines
Vivid Machines Inc., which claims to be a frontrunner in “software-defined manufacturing,” final week introduced that it has raised $126 million in Collection C funding. This brings the San Francisco-based firm’s whole funding so far to $400 million.
Vivid Machines stated it is going to use the newest funding to launch product improvements, develop its software program stack for elevated meeting flexibility, and develop strategic relationships with ecosystem companions.
“Adopting ecosystem-wide, software-defined manufacturing processes will ease the mounting burden from the trade’s largest challenges, together with an absence of expert workforce; growing old, inflexible techniques; disparate and fragmented provide chains; and an total lack of requirements throughout the worth chain,” acknowledged Lior Susan, government chairman and CEO and government chairman at Vivid Machines.
Vivid Machines sees alternative for extra environment friendly meeting
“Presently, electronics manufacturing is outdated. It’s usually executed manually, with remoted, inefficient processes that drive up prices,” asserted Vivid Machines. “With the proliferation of AI driving up demand for compute energy and AI {hardware}, the trade faces a bottleneck throughout dozens of fragmented distributors that causes a provide chain visitors jam.”
The firm was based in 2018 by trade veterans who noticed a novel alternative to unravel this bottleneck. Vivid Machines stated it’s taking a data-focused strategy to electronics manufacturing with robotics and software program. It stated its “full-stack” system gives centralized information visibility, traceability, efficiency benchmarking, and versatile automation.
Vivid Machines stated it makes use of laptop imaginative and prescient, machine studying, and software program in its synthetic intelligence spine for automated meeting. This AI {hardware} infrastructure can remodel how merchandise are designed and manufactured, it stated.
Digital ecosystem helps continuous enchancment
In Vivid Machine’s digital ecosystem, beneficial information is continually generated and communicated to a central hub, creating an engine for continuous optimization. Its Design from Automated Meeting (DFAA) device depends on this information community to supply digital design suggestions to shorten merchandise’ time to market.
By uniting this information community with agile robotics, modeling, and simulation, Vivid Machines stated it will possibly assist “microfactories” and trendy factories that exceed what conventional factories can obtain.
As well as, the corporate stated its robots use algorithms to make sure high quality management and traceability throughout meeting inspection. As soon as merchandise attain their finish of life, the corporate stated its versatile disassembly capabilities might help harvest and recycle elements, reaching full round manufacturing.
Vivid Machines will get assist from NVIDIA, Microsoft, and extra
Within the spherical, $106 million in fairness was led by funding type funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. This additionally included participation from NVIDIA, Microsoft, Eclipse, Jabil, and Shinhan Securities. The opposite $20 million got here within the type of enterprise debt from J.P. Morgan.
“The demand for AI is catalyzing a metamorphosis in electronics manufacturing. Provide chains and manufacturing and meeting processes are being redesigned to drive sooner product innovation and time to market,” stated Matt Singer, managing director of BlackRock. “With blue-chip trade leaders fixing on Vivid Machine’s software-defined options, the staff is uniquely positioned to speed up automation inside the manufacturing trade and resolve a really tough, however crucial problem to satisfy the tempo of innovation and ship tangible ROI [return on investment] for companies.”
Vivid Machines stated this funding spherical not solely helps its imaginative and prescient, “however it additionally highlights the extreme strain that enormous cloud-compute suppliers are going through to scale AI infrastructure throughout compute, information storage, and associated community capabilities to satisfy growing demand.”
“By collaborating with know-how leaders reminiscent of NVIDIA and Microsoft, Vivid Machines can ship versatile, built-in, and clever manufacturing options to our prospects, beginning with DFAA and persevering with – with unprecedented visibility – via each step of the method, proper via to the circularity of recycling,” Susan stated.
“As optimized manufacturing techniques are sooner, extra resilient, and extra environment friendly than their handbook counterparts, our prospects are extra aggressive when it comes to price, their merchandise’ time-to-market, and buyer delight,” he stated. “And in a world the place we are able to now use AI and software program to show robotics techniques how one can construct electronics, the chance to redefine how we are going to design and construct electronics is limitless.”
The firm, which has greater than 200 staff worldwide, lately introduced an integration and go-to-market partnership with Microsoft Azure. The companions stated this can allow an accessible, environment friendly, and data-driven manufacturing course of for electronics producers.