Oqton raises over $40 million investment for its digital manufacturing platform

Oqton, an American-Belgian software company specialising in artificial intelligence-powered solutions for the manufacturing industry, has raised more than $40 million 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, who is the former CEO Autodesk, Dries Buytaert, of Drupal and Acquia, and Peter Mercelis, of 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, including additive manufacturing, robotic welding, and CNC machining.

Oqton says its platform is unique in that it combines several manufacturing software capabilities – such as CAD, PLM, CAM, IOT, MES, QMS – into a single platform, enabling an unprecedented degree of AI-powered automation and optimization.

Users can automatically capture expert knowledge and eliminate repetitive tasks, access technologies remotely and across multiple sites, and optimize production planning to improve utilization and quality.

Samir Hanna, Oqton’s co-founder and chairman, says: “We can already achieve 100 percent automation in the dental and jewelry verticals, resulting in 30 percent overall cost reduction.

“Given the platform strategy, the software can be targeted to many specific industry verticals, like dental, jewelry, medical, industrial and aerospace, as well as to different personas and workflows within those industries.”

Being fully integrated, users can also link the platform to their traditional technologies, such as CNC, welding, and post-processing machines for a truly end-to-end manufacturing solution, making their processes faster, more adaptable, and more cost-effective.

Oqton has already established partnerships with EOS, Sisma, Trumpf, Prodways and Sandvik.

Ben Schrauwen, Oqton’s co-founder and CEO, says: “We are keen to have new investors on board who can help us scale globally, with both a direct and indirect sales approach. We truly think the time has come for the manufacturing space to embrace the cloud and we are working hard to facilitate this.”

This funding round coincides with the announcement that Schrauwen, Oqton’s CTO, will be taking over as CEO. Hanna will become executive chairman.

Both Samir Hanna and Schrauwen are serial entrepreneurs, previously at Autodesk together, where they spent 10 and four years respectively in senior executive positions before founding Oqton.