SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Falkonry, Inc. the leading provider of operational machine learning for Global 2000 industrial companies, today announced that it has raised $4.6 million in a Series A funding round. This round brings the total funding raised by Falkonry to $10.9 million. The Series A round is led by Presidio Ventures, the early stage venture capital arm of Sumitomo Corporation. Fortive Corporation, a diversified industrial growth company, has also joined the round as a strategic investor. The early seed stage investors will enhance their existing investment positions in Falkonry, and include Basis Set Ventures, Polaris Partners, Start Smart Labs and Zetta Venture Partners.
The company has achieved significant customer success over the last 12 months, with industry leaders such as Toyota, EDP, and others adopting Falkonry’s machine learning system, Falkonry LRS, without the need for data scientists. Falkonry LRS can be used directly by industrial practitioners and enables operations teams to discover patterns hidden in their existing operations data, apply predictive analytics and receive actionable insights. This new operational machine learning approach is delivering substantial improvements in industrial throughput, uptime, yield and product quality. Highlighting its growing momentum in the market, Falkonry was recently recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor and an IDC Innovator.
Strategic Investment
Operational machine learning has seen rapid growth and adoption in the Americas and Asia, and established OEMs and corporate development partners in these regions realize the strategic product and market fit that Falkonry brings to complement their existing Industrial IoT solution portfolios.
“Global 2000 leaders are turning to Falkonry because we enable them to realize significant operational improvements in as little as three weeks and have already saved customers millions of dollars annually,” said Dr. Nikunj Mehta, Founder and CEO of Falkonry. “We are currently engaged with companies in industries ranging from oil & gas, automotive, semiconductor, mining & metals, power & energy and industrial equipment.”
For Falkonry, this investment furthers its collaboration and alignment with strategic partners and provides access to new routes to revenue through OEM opportunities without increasing direct sales and marketing costs.
Falkonry intends to use the new funding for supporting the growth in its engineering and customer success organizations to meet the increasing product demand and expanding customer base.
Explosive Market Opportunity
The market for operational machine learning is expected to grow significantly with analysts such as McKinsey & Company predicting that the next 20 percent productivity rise in operations will come from digital analytics. AGC Partners predicts that adoption of these analytics in the manufacturing sector will grow from 15 percent to over 50 percent by 2020 and be a significant portion of the $210 billion big data and business analytics spend projected by IDC Research.
Strengthening the Board
Presidio Ventures President & CEO, Ted Tatsumi, and Fortive Vice President of Strategic Development, Raj Ratnakar, will join the Falkonry board as observers. Mark Gorenberg from Zetta Venture Partners and Dr. Parveen Jain will continue as board directors.
Additional Comments on the News
“Being able to quickly predict and derive value from operational data is a major advantage for every Global 2000 industrial company,” said Ted Tatsumi, President and CEO of Presidio Ventures. “Machine learning is an explosive market to be in today, and we look forward to being a part of the continued growth we see Falkonry achieving in the future.”
“Fortive’s market leading product and technology solutions are deployed across a wide range of critical industrial applications and we are excited by the opportunity to incorporate operational machine learning from Falkonry to further increase the value for our customers,” said Raj Ratnakar, Vice President of Strategic Development for Fortive. “The Falkonry LRS system is well positioned as a front runner in machine learning due to its ease of use and short time to value.”
About Presidio Ventures
Founded in 1998, Presidio Ventures is the wholly owned early stage investment vehicle of Sumitomo Corporation. Presidio works to identify the most promising growth industries and partner with the respective leading startups. Since its inception, Presidio Ventures has invested in over 160 U.S. startups. As a strategic investor, Presidio also assists the companies to expand their business in the Japan and Asian markets. More information is available at www.presidio-ventures.com.
About Fortive
Fortive is a diversified industrial growth company comprised of Professional Instrumentation and Industrial Technologies businesses that are recognized leaders in attractive markets. With 2017 revenues of $6.7 billion, Fortive’s well-known brands hold leading positions in field instrumentation, transportation, sensing, product realization, automation and specialty, and franchise distribution. Fortive is headquartered in Everett, Washington and employs a team of more than 26,000 research and development, manufacturing, sales, distribution, service and administrative employees in more than 50 countries around the world. With a culture rooted in continuous improvement, the core of our company’s operating model is the Fortive Business System. For more information please visit: www.fortive.com.
About Falkonry
Falkonry is the leading provider of operational machine learning for Global 2000 companies who are looking to achieve significant improvements in the throughput, quality and yield of their industrial operations. Falkonry’s ready-to-use machine learning system, Falkonry LRS, enables operations teams to discover patterns hidden in their existing operations data, apply predictive analytics and receive actionable insights, all without requiring data scientists. Falkonry LRS can be used directly by industrial practitioners, like a “data scientist-in-a-box”, and can be deployed both on-premises or in the cloud. For more information about Falkonry and its products, please visit www.falkonry.com.