Spark Capital leads investment in German startup to fuel expansion to additional domains
Investment will go towards scaling in markets and expanding application areas
ELISE, the Germany-based connected engineering platform, has closed its Series A financing round of $14.8 million. The investment is led by Spark Capital, with participation from BMW i Ventures, Cherry Ventures, UVC Partners, and Venture Stars.
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ELISE co-founders Daniel Siegel, Moritz Maier and Sebastian Möller. (Photo: Business Wire)
Founded in 2018 by Dr. Moritz Maier, Sebastian Möller, and Daniel Siegel, ELISE makes engineering more accessible for teams with a low code platform that allows for connected, digital and automated product development. With a background in bionic research and offering engineering services, the founding team developed a solution for their projects to overcome the challenges of manual and repetitive development tasks. Quickly, inquiries about engineering services converted to paying customers leveraging the software to solve business challenges. Today, customers include BMW Group, Hyundai Motor Group, MAN Truck Bus and Toyota Gazoo Racing.
"This new investment will allow us to make significant progress towards our goal of becoming the low-code standard in engineering. The ease of use of our visual programming language enables engineers to model and automate development processes in the shortest possible time," explained Maier, co-founder and CEO of ELISE. "With our open platform, we enable engineers to transfer the agile and efficient methods of software development to hardware development. This automates manual and repetitive tasks and enables companies to manage the growing complexity of product development in the face of increasing cost and innovation pressure."
"ELISE has made the idea of connected engineering part of everyday life at renowned companies including BMW, Mercedes-Benz Group and Airbus. When ELISE customers achieve up to 90 percent time savings in development processes, it's much more than a proof of concept. It is the future of engineering that ELISE customers can already participate in today," said Alex Finkelstein, general partner at Spark Capital.
Benjamin Erhart, Partner at UVC Partners added, "ELISE has already fundamentally changed the way products are developed. We didn't think at the beginning that rapid iteration, reusing work and easy integration of existing tools would have such a huge impact on product development. The improvements that ELISE has been able to achieve with the first well-known customers, both in terms of development time and component performance, are incredible. We are convinced that sooner or later the ELISE platform will be the go-to tool for engineers in their day-to-day business.".
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About ELISE
The product ELISE stands for Connected Engineering and is the first open low-code development platform of its kind transforming the product development process. Based on algorithms, it enables engineers to model product development steps digitally in one universal work environment, run them, and systematically reuse their work for new variants or projects. This leads to more efficient use of product knowledge and accelerates development significantly. Application areas include the automotive industry and aerospace.
The company Developed by engineers for engineers: The founders have provided engineering services at the Alfred Wegener Institute for over 10 years and have designed a visual programming language for more efficient design and execution of their projects. Customers include Hyundai, MAN Tru, EDAG, Premium Aerotec, and Miele.
About Spark Capital
We are Spark Capital, investors in products we love by creators we admire, including Affirm, Carta, Cruise, Discord, Oculus, Plaid, Postmates, Slack, Twitter, and Wayfair. We know there are no playbooks or formulas for success and are here to help founders win their own way. We invest across all sectors and stages, and work out of San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.
www.sparkcapital.com
About Cherry Ventures
Cherry Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm led by a team of entrepreneurs with experience building fast-scaling companies such as Zalando and Spotify. The firm backs Europe's boldest founders, usually as their first institutional investor, and supports them in everything from their go-to-market strategy and the scaling of their businesses. Cherry Ventures has previously invested in the seed stage of over 90 companies across Europe, including FlixBus, Auto1 Group, Flaschenpost, Infarm, Rows, Forto, SellerX, Juni, and Flink. Cherry Ventures is based in Berlin and invests across Europe with operations in London and Stockholm. For more, visit: cherry.vc
About UVC Partners
UVC Partners is a Munich- and Berlin-based early-stage venture capital firm that invests in European B2B startups in the areas of enterprise software, industrial technologies, and mobility. The fund typically invests between 0.5m 10m initially and up to 30m in total per company. Portfolio companies benefit from the extensive investment and exit experience of the management team as well as from the close cooperation with UnternehmerTUM, Europe's leading innovation, and business creation center. With over 300 employees and more than 100 industry partners, UnternehmerTUM can draw from many years of experience in establishing young companies. This cooperation enables UVC Partners to offer startups unique access to talent, industry customers, and other financial partners.
www.uvcpartners.com
About BMW i Ventures
BMW i Ventures, BMW's venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, invests money and resources in startups in the fields of Transportation, Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Sustainability. Notable investments include Chargepoint (IPO), Graphcore, Kinexon, Motorway, Proterra (IPO), Solid Power (IPO), Tekion, Turntide and Xometry (IPO). BMW i Ventures invests in businesses that need the precision to scale their solutions quickly. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, Silicon Valley, with offices in San Francisco and Munich.
https://www.bmwiventures.com/
About Venture Stars
Venture Stars is a Munich-based venture capital firm managing three funds focused on early-stage investments in innovative, digital B2C and B2B business models. The team of serial internet entrepreneurs currently manages two funds typically investing €500k 2m EUR initially and up to 4m in total per company. Having started as an incubator, Venture Stars has a tradition of working very closely with the founders of its portfolio companies. Venture Stars' support goes beyond capital and includes know-how, network and operational manpower on topics such as strategy, organizational development, financing and exit.
www.venture-stars.com
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