Scandit has welcomed back shareholders including GV, Schneider Electric, Sony and Swisscom for a round that made the ETH Zurich spinout a unicorn.
Scandit, a Switzerland-based data capture technology spinout of ETH Zurich, closed a $150m series D round led by Warburg Pincus yesterday that increased its valuation to more than $1bn.
The round included GV, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV and Swisscom Ventures, respective vehicles for conglomerate Alphabet, consumer electronics group Sony and telecoms firm Swisscom. Energy management and automation equipment manufacturer Schneider Electric also invested.
NGP Capital, the venture capital firm sponsored by telecoms firm Nokia, also took part, as did Atomico, Forestay Capital, G2VP and Kreos Capital.
Scandit has developed data capture technology that enables devices such as smartphones, drones, digital glasses or robots to recognise and scan barcodes, text, identity tags and objects, even in challenging light conditions, at angles, on damaged labels and across several labels at once.
Applications include ShelfView, enabling retail shelf management using augmented reality and computer vision technology. The spinout will use the series D funding to grow its international presence and team, with a focus on the Asia Pacific region, and to accelerate R&D activities.
Samuel Mueller, chief executive at Scandit, said, “By following our original vision of using the camera on smart devices to interact with physical items, we are transforming the daily lives of customers, employees and businesses to enable enhanced, personalised experiences and achieve their digital transformation ambitions.
“The new funding will allow us to help more businesses globally and to better empower an evolving mobile workforce, meet new customer expectations and deliver increasingly automated operations.
“We are thrilled to have Warburg Pincus as our partner on the next phase of our growth journey. They bring a deep understanding of our business and software growth investing and a long track record of backing winning businesses.”
Scandit has now raised nearly $300m altogether. G2VP led an $80m series C round in May 2020, when it was joined by Atomico, GV, Kreos, NGP Capital, Swisscom Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, the corporate venturing arm for cloud computing firm Salesforce.
GV led a $30m series B round in 2018 when NGP Capital and Atomico also invested. The latter had been the only named investor in Scandit’s $7.5m series A round in 2017.
– Photograph courtesy of Scandit
