GERMANY: München-based transport AI company Konux has secured financing to support the further development of software-as-a-service products which use internet-of-things and machine learning to automate railway operating, monitoring and maintenance processes. It has also announced the appointment of former Vossloh and Siemens rail automation division CEO Andreas Busemann to the newly created role of Chief Revenue Officer from February 1.
Founded in 2014, Konux has raised more than US$130m and is active in 10 countries in Europe and Asia. In December it announced a long-term framework agreement to provide cloud-based SaaS covering 1 300 turnouts in a €15m Deutsche Bahn predictive maintenance project.
‘Rail will play a major role in our long journey to lower CO2 emissions’, said Konux Founder & CEO Andreas Kunze. ‘To achieve this, rail’s infrastructure needs to be upgraded and digitised in order to become the mobility choice of tomorrow. Konux is perfectly positioned to become a global market leader in rail’s digital transformation.’
The US$80m Series C financing round was led by Sanno Capital and included new investor Athos as well as existing investors including DIVC, New Enterprise Associates and NEA co-founder Dick Kramlich.
‘Konux is clearly a next-generation “Made in Germany” global market leader, addressing a huge pain point in the world of mobility’, said Torsten Kreindl, Managing Partner at DIVC. ‘It is 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.’
Busemann said ‘as a neutral and independent player, Konux focuses entirely on optimising infrastructures, rather than selling them. To me, this innovative approach, combined with the agility of the entire team, is totally convincing.’
- An in-depth article looking at Konux’s work with DB Netz to monitor turnout health appeared in the November 2017 issue of Railway Gazette International magazine, and is available to Premium subscribers in the archive.
