German investors join growth round, creating the leading European AI company in sustainable transportation, 14.01.2021
Round lead by Sanno Capital – New investor Athos
Existing investors participating significantly
KONUX CEO Andreas Kunze: “We will create more than 100 new jobs, new products, and boost our global footprint” (See open positions here)
MUNICH, Germany KONUX, the Munich-based AI scale up, has successfully secured a USD 80m Series C financing round, led by impact investor Sanno Capital. New to the round is technology investor Athos, the family office of the Struengmanns, who are also the largest BioNTech shareholder. Existing investors participated significantly in this round, including DIVC, and leading Silicon Valley VC New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Furthermore, NEA’s Co-Founder and former Chairman Dick Kramlich is also participating personally in this transaction.
Following this financing round, KONUX is now the largest AI scale-up in Europe in the field of sustainable transportation. Based on its own AI-Core, KONUX is building SaaS products, using IIoT devices and machine learning to improve railway network capacity, reliability, and cost-efficiency. Learn more about our Predictive Maintenance System for Rail Switches
KONUX Founder and CEO Andreas Kunze said: “Rail will play a major role in our long journey to lower CO2 emissions. To achieve this, rail infrastructure needs to be upgraded and digitized in order to become the mobility choice of tomorrow. KONUX is perfectly positioned to become a global market leader in rail’s digital transformation.”
Florian Moerth, Managing Partner at Sanno Capital, said: “We are excited to deepen our partnership with KONUX – a truly amazing company which continuously outperforms its goals. KONUX transforms the complex transportation industry and thereby paves the way for a more sustainable future. Within its field, KONUX has positioned itself as the most recognized global market leader.”
“With Athos‘ and the Struengmanns‘ capabilities to make entrepreneurship ‘Made in Germany’ a global success, we are excited to work with KONUX and alongside such reputable existing investors on the next chapters of the business,” said Dr. Michael Riemenschneider, Managing Director of Athos.
„KONUX is clearly a next-generation ‘Made in Germany’ global market leader, addressing a huge pain point in the world of mobility. It’s fantastic that technology companies with such an ambition level and market potential are no longer exclusive to Silicon Valley but born and headquartered in Germany,” said Torsten Kreindl, Managing Partner at Munich-based DIVC and one of Europe’s most senior trans-Atlantic venture investors.
“We are super impressed with KONUX’s exceptional progress. They have emerged as the thought leader for the digitization of international railway systems — a huge future market, and we are delighted to further our partnership with the team,” said Greg Papadopoulos, former CTO of Sun Microsystems and Venture Partner at NEA.
Andreas Kunze added: “We will create more than a hundred new and super exciting jobs, especially in data science and software engineering to significantly expand our product portfolio and AI technological leadership. Additionally, we will boost our global market footprint.”
KONUX is already active in ten countries, both in Europe and the most important rail markets in Asia. At the end of 2020, KONUX and Deutsche Bahn (DB) concluded the first ever cloud-based SaaS long-term framework agreement on the digitization of DB’s switches, as critical elements of the rail infrastructure to make passenger travel and cargo transportation more reliable. (Read the press release about KONUX’s collaboration with DB) here
About KONUX
KONUX is a leading German AI scale-up, transforming railway operations for a sustainable future. The company combines Machine Learning and IIoT to deliver Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for operation, monitoring, and maintenance process automation. KONUX increases capacity, reliability, and cost-efficiency to make railway the mobility choice of tomorrow. Since its foundation in 2014, KONUX has raised more than $130 million from world-leading investors, expanded to ten countries in Europe and Asia, and was selected by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as one of the world’s 30 most innovative start-ups and scale-ups worldwide. For more information please go to www.konux.com.
Media contact KONUX
Dr. Hans Juergen Croissant
Company Spokesperson
Tel.: +49 163 7013035
Email: hansjuergen.croissant@konux.de