Materials analysis startup SirenOpt has recruited Hitachi Ventures and InMotion Ventures for a $6.5m round as it prepares to commercially launch next year.
The corporate venture arms of carmaker JLR and electronics and industrial manufacturer Hitachi boosted their manufacturing intelligence portfolios today, contributing to a $6.5m funding round for SirenOpt.
The US-based startup has built a system called PlasmaSens, in which cold atmospheric plasma interacts with the coating of materials, using machine learning and predictive analytics to analyse their properties, forming a distinctive ‘fingerprint’ for each one.
Hitachi Ventures led the round, which also features JLR’s venture capital subsidiary, InMotion Ventures, as well as Voyager Ventures and Visionaries Tomorrow, the venture capital firms that co-led SirenOpt’s $6.6m seed round last year.
The technology is intended to strengthen quality control during the manufacturing process, particularly in batteries, aerospace parts, power generation technology and semiconductors, all industries in which Hitachi is active.
“We’ve been struck by the extraordinary speed of SirenOpt over the past 12 months – validating its solution across new industries, advancing the inline instrument and attracting blue-chip customer interest in each sector,” said Hitachi Ventures investor Jan Marchewski.
“With a manufacturing-integrated device capable of measuring multiple material characteristics non-destructively, SirenOpt is delivering what many have long considered the holy grail of metrology.”
For InMotion, the company fits into an investment strategy that has leaned into materials and manufacturing technology over the past 18 months, with deals including early rounds for rare earth element recycler Cyclic Materials (also in Hitachi Ventures’ portfolio), biomaterials startup Uncaged Innovations and BeyondMath, developer of an AI physics modelling platform.
“SirenOpt’s intelligence platform is setting new standards for advanced manufacturing: delivering real-time, micron-level, non-destructive testing and unlocking significant efficiency gains across numerous industries,” said InMotion managing director Mike Smeed.
“With early deployments underway and strong customer traction, the scalability and impact of the PlasmaSens platform are already being proven.”
Proceeds from the round will support an increasing in hiring across SirenOpt’s engineering, product and commercial teams as it prepares to begin deploying its technology in factories from next year.
