Humatics Corporation, the pioneer in microlocation products and software, has raised $28 Million in a Series A1 financing. Tenfore Holdings, an investment management firm that provides operational value-added resources to growth-stage companies, led the round. Blackhorn Ventures and JCI Ventures (the corporate venture arm of Johnson Controls) also participated in the round, as did all major investors from the company’s prior Series A financing including Fontinalis Partners, Airbus Ventures, Lockheed Martin Ventures, and Presidio Ventures (the U.S. investment arm of Sumitomo), with Silicon Valley Bank providing a debt facility as part of the Series A1 financing. The Series A1 is the culmination of Humatics’ acquisition of 5D Robotics and Time Domain Corporation in 2018, properly capitalizing the combined company to meet strong industrial demand for its microlocation products and software — a Spatial Intelligence Platform™ that precisely positions machines, people, and things in complex environments.
“With its strategic focus on industrial applications, Humatics microlocation can unlock tremendous value by driving greater efficiency and safety in factories, warehouses, ports, and logistics centers,” said Dan Levine, Tenfore managing partner and new Humatics board member. “Humatics has shown its KinetIQ products to be highly precise and robust, with deployments in some of the harshest industrial environments like Tata Steel’s steelyards in India. Other products in development have the potential to cement Humatics’ position as the leader in developing a microlocation ecosystem that we believe can be as groundbreaking as the first commercial introduction of GPS a couple of decades ago.”
The Series A1 financing brings Humatics’ total financing to more than $50 Million. In addition to expanding operational capacity at its new 25,000 square foot headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company will use the proceeds to scale production of its KinetIQ 100 peer-to-peer ranging product and accelerate time to market for its KinetIQ 300 product for 3D positioning. Humatics is targeting several industrial microlocation applications in warehousing, manufacturing, and commercial ports that require down to 2 centimeters of precision and repeatability up to 500 meters away:
Wireless, tapeless Autonomous Guided Vehicle (AGV) navigation and forklift tracking for both indoor and outdoor use that delivers on the Industry 4.0 promise of flexible factories;
Collision avoidance and automated crane positioning in harsh environmental conditions such as those found in steelyards, ports and mines; and
Drastically increased rail signaling capabilities in tunnels that require robust, long-distance ranging.
Chris Cheever, co-founder and partner at Fontinalis Partners, led the Humatics Series A financing in 2017, and noted, “Humatics has accomplished so much since the Series A close, including two acquisitions, tripling its headcount to nearly 70 employees, a highly successful commercial launch at the International Manufacturing Technology Show last September, and most important, shipping their KinetIQ products globally with growing customer demand every month.”
Regarding the company’s recent growth and the A1 round, Humatics co-founder and CEO David Mindell said, “I am proud of our team’s incredible milestones this past year. With this new financing, we will address the best problem a growing company can face: overwhelming customer demand. Our customers need microlocation deployed like WiFi as a facility-wide service, and hunger for the ‘virtual grid’ of precise location services that our Spatial Intelligence Platform provides. We have sold thousands of our KinetIQ products and have robust 2019 sales commitments. With the market pull getting stronger by the month, this new financing primes us to scale our operations and product development to capitalize on this extraordinary market moment.”
About Humatics
Humatics is pioneering microlocation technology that is faster, more precise, and more affordable than any 3D positioning or location tracking technology on the market. Its breakthrough microlocation products and analytics software comprise the Humatics Spatial Intelligence Platform™ that is revolutionizing how people and machines locate, navigate, and collaborate in the connected world. With its extensible architecture and application programming interfaces (APIs), the Spatial Intelligence Platform powers a growing ecosystem of new position-based products and services with the promise to transform huge markets, including industrial automation, next-generation construction, autonomous vehicles, and smart cities. Humatics is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts with an engineering center of excellence in Huntsville, Alabama. More information is available at www.humatics.com.
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