A software company based in Israel has announced a $24 million funding round.
Seebo, creates artificial intelligence (AI) software solutions to predict process-driven losses for several types of manufacturing, including food, chemical, glass, steel and cement. In the cement manufacturing sector, Seebo's software promises to improve clinker quality, increase refractory lifetime, reduce kiln feed variance, reduce emissions and optimize kiln burning zone temperature.
The funding round is important because it shows how quickly the cement and concrete industries are pivoting to high-tech solutions for process improvement and emissions reduction.
From a Seebo press release:
Seebo, a predictive quality and yield solution, announced its extended Series B financing round, for a total of $24 million. The funding will be used to further expand its global reach and continue enhancing its process-based artificial intelligence solution. The round is led by Vertex Ventures with participation from 10D, The Phoenix and Leumi Partners.
Cement manufacturers suffer, on average, millions of dollars of losses each year due to various process-driven inefficiencies such as kiln throughputs, emissions, clinker quality and ammonia usage. Seebo’s software enables cement manufacturers to identify process-driven inefficiencies in production processes to predict and prevent production losses.
Seebo succeeded in infusing artificial intelligence algorithms with deep process manufacturing expertise, giving its solution the ability to understand each individual production process. This saves its customers funds each year by revealing the hidden causes of production losses. Seebos’ customers include leading manufacturers such as Nestle, PepsiCo, General Mills, Barilla, Mondelez, Allnex, ICL and many more.
This latest round comes during a period of exponential growth (400% YoY) for Seebo, as many manufacturers face an increasingly challenging and competitive marketplace in the year of COVID-19. Among those challenges is the more urgent need to increase efficiency, specifically by lowering production losses and in some cases to meet unprecedented spikes in demand due to changing consumer behavior. The Seebo solution has provided these manufacturers with the ability to achieve these goals in a highly scalable way, without costly investments in new production lines and facilities.
“The increasingly complex business environment has pushed process manufacturers to explore new ways to eliminate lingering inefficiencies in their production processes,” says Lior Akavia, CEO and co-founder of Seebo.
“We are happy to announce that we have tripled our investment nine months after our initial investment in Seebo, while observing up close how Seebo is saving process manufactures millions of dollars and how they in return are happy to expand the solution to additional lines,” says Yanai Oron, general partner at Vertex Ventures. “Seebo is the only vendor providing a productized solution that is based on artificial intelligence across the full product line”
