Machinery downtime in the heavy machinery industry leads to significant financial and opportunity costs, factoring in late penalties, idle labor, equipment rentals, and administrative expenses. Furthermore, Right to Repair laws require manufacturers and dealerships to provide technical support and parts for machines for up to 10 years.
This is why we are excited to back, Digital Iron, a copilot for dealerships that leverages AI models trained on CAD schematics, machine manuals, and telematics data. The platform offers intelligent diagnostics and parts sourcing to respond faster to breakdowns.
Co-founded by Ciaran Gillen (CEO), a second-time founder, with 18 years of experience in the material processing and equipment sales industry, and Salina Brown (CPO), previously Director of User Experience at HP, Digital Iron automates order processing and summarization, thus helping reduce errors and improving operational efficiency. The integration of enriched dealership, customer, and machine data speeds up diagnostics and increases parts sales, boosting revenue at dealerships.
Ciaran Gillen, Co-founder and CEO of Digital Iron comments:
“Machines break down on average 600 hours every year and there’s an extremely manual process involved in trying to get them back in action. This is because each machine can have anywhere between 50 to 200 documents attached to it and as dealerships could be selling up to 1,000 machines a year they can find it difficult to answer questions to find out what has gone wrong.
“Down time for machines obviously means lost revenue but our platform addresses this by ingesting all the manuals so that when questions come in we know exactly what documents to access to get answers to problems in seconds rather than in days.
On why we backed Digital Iron, Kate McGinn from our investment team comments:
“Digital Iron is tapping an immense opportunity to disrupt a large, underserved, and undigitised market. We’re thrilled to back two heavy machinery wizards, Salina and Ciaran, as they help dealerships offer 10x better diagnostics and parts sourcing.”
We are excited to lead Digital Iron’s $2 million pre-seed round alongside our friends at Concept Ventures, RTP Global, and FJ Labs.
For more information, visit digitaliron.com
Legacy ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems developed in the ‘80s and ‘90s fail to meet the expectations of today’s modern, global-first companies and are ripe for technological innovation. Software solutions focused on the general ledger — a company’s source of truth for financial transactions – are among the essentials in the CFO tech stack.
This is why we are excited to back Light, the first AI-powered general ledger for automating global company finances. Founded by Jonathan Sanders and Filip Kozjak, Light’s mission is to revolutionize ERP software for modern multinationals.
We partnered up with Light as part of their pre-seed and we’re really excited to see them come out of stealth and announce their seed round led by Atomico, in which we also participated.
The Copenhagen-based AI-driven platform unifies accounting, tax, payments, and reporting across entities, countries, and currencies, drastically reducing month-end closing times and enhancing accuracy. Companies can integrate Light with their CRM and HRM tools, their banks, and even their communication channels (e.g. Microsoft Teams and Slack).
Jonathan Sanders, Light’s co-founder and CEO emphasises:
“Having both worked at and founded scaling companies, I am acutely familiar with how poor legacy accounting systems are, and how much that can impact your business. They’re expensive, very slow, and require too many add-ons to be useful on a standalone basis. With Light, our goal is to help companies understand their finances more accurately and quickly by integrating a ledger with a strong application layer, helping them achieve faster growth, stronger operations, and greater resilience.”
Light’s product has been developed in close collaboration with advisors who consist of former product leaders, chief architects and CXOs from Workday, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics.
On why we partnered up with Light, our Partner Tom Wilson comments:
“Jonathan is a perfect founder to be building Light, he brings a huge amount of experience from his time working at Seedcamp Unicorn Pleo and founding VC-backed Juni. He fully appreciates the current market that Light is competing against and the scale of the opportunity to disrupt the legacy players. We love working with Jonathan and the Light team and look forward to seeing what they can achieve with this funding round which we’re delighted to follow-on in.”
We are excited to participate in Light’s $13M financing round led by Atomico, alongside Entrée Capital, Cherry Ventures, and notable angels including Mario Götze.
For more information, visit light.inc.
In France, the building sector represents 43% of annual energy consumption. To achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the country has committed to tripling the number of energy-efficient home retrofits.
This is why we are excited to back Kelvin, a Paris-based software platform dedicated to professionals in the construction and real estate industries. Founded in 2023 by serial entrepreneurs Clémentine Lalande, Guillaume Sempé, and Pierre Joly, Kelvin uses artificial intelligence to generate studies for the energy-efficient renovation of residential buildings. Based on a unique combination of open data, computer vision, and artificial intelligence, the software is co-developed with the French Scientific and Technical Center for Building (CSTB).
Kelvin remotely estimates the energy performance of a property and provides tailored work recommendations with associated costs to ensure a significant improvement in the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). The company’s mission is to scale up the energy renovation of residential housing.
Clémentine Lalande, Co-founder and CEO of Kelvin explains:
“We need to scale up energy renovations. Kelvin’s AI, trained on several million audits and photos, brings together all the expertise in energy renovation and thermal engineering to provide efficiency and reliability to renovation professionals.
Kelvin is already deployed among contractors, matchmaking platforms, and real estate agencies. Currently operating in France with a team of 12 people, Kelvin aims to become the reference in the field of energy renovation of residential housing.
On why we invested, Felix Martinez from our investment team comments:
‘We believe Europe has an edge to produce a picks-and-shovels winner in the gold rush that is energy-efficient renovations in real estate. We’ve met a number of teams building in this space and the seasoned founding trio of Clementine, Pierre and Guillaume stood out to us on many different levels. We’re super excited to back them on this journey.’
We are excited to participate in Kelvin’s first fundraising round of €5 million led by Racine² (impact fund by Serena x makesense), alongside Raise Capital, Kima Ventures, Motier Ventures, and several business angels in the renovation sector.
For more information visit go-kelvin.com.
The UK and many countries across Europe face major labour shortages in the infrastructure sectors. Blue- and green-collar workers – who play a key role in the transition to a more sustainable economy and national scale infrastructure improvements – need better digital access to training to do their jobs safely and keep up with the latest technological innovation.
This is why we are excited to back Visibly, a tech platform that aims to rebuild regulated training for the infrastructure sector from the ground up. By giving skilled workers the training they deserve, the UK-based company is on a mission to enable blue- and green-collar workers to have a career with impact.
Founded in 2021 by Kane St Quintin, who previously built construction company Pickr, Visibly’s groundbreaking certification-as-a-service platform broadens the range of regulated certifications available to blue- and green-collar workforces, so they can overcome the labour shortages that limit action on the climate crisis and national infrastructure improvements.
Visibly’s user-first technology gives workers on-demand education that adapts to their individual capabilities and translates to the world around them. Furthermore, it provides access to advantages office workers take for granted when undergoing training, like peer-to-peer feedback and expert-led coaching.
Kane St Quintin, Founder and CEO at Visibly emphasises:
“Think of someone digging a hole (excavating). Sounds simple, but hit a high-pressure pipeline and you’ve got fatal consequences. It’s a dangerous task – so how is it taught? In a classroom, with a 20-question written assessment. This is clearly ridiculous. It’s situations like this – and their larger-scale impact – that we’ve set out to change.”
Visibly’s clients include Hitachi, Kier, and SRL. Alison Spooner, SRL’s Service Director comments:
“Giving our users ongoing access to expert-led training and testing their competence through Visibly makes sure they’re doing their jobs safely and effectively. Visibly is a vital tool for us as we look to expand our user base.”
On why we invested, Kate McGinn from our investment team highlights:
“Climate action needs more than just great equipment to transition to net-zero; we need skilled tradespeople to build, install, and upkeep our changing infrastructure. Visibly is the answer to our critical shortage of ‘green-collar’ workers; we’re thrilled to be backing Kane and his team on this mission.”
We are excited to participate in Visibly’s $7.5 million funding round led by our friends at Creandum, alongside Brighteye Ventures, Triple Point, and prominent business angels, including Herbert Sablotny, Celia Francis, and Nick Kingsbury.
Visibly’s team includes Chief Learning Officer Kirsten Campbell-Howes (ex-Busuu, Chegg). The latest round of funding will be used to build the Visibly team and accelerate product development and the breadth of regulated certifications it offers.
For more information visit visiblyhq.com
View open positions at https://apply.workable.com/visiblyhq/ .
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