Domestic Manufacturing Olympic Debut
Shop Talk
Capturing this week's zeitgeist
The Olympics are in full swing with not only miraculous displays of athleticism but also technology. From running shoes that can track force, movement, and form for runners and other athletes to AthleteGPT; big data and AI are transforming Olympic training.
Kaizen Blitz
- 🚦 Andon Status
- 🟢 Small companies are enjoying a surge in revenue as US defense and energy customers turn to 3D-printing technology.
- 🟡 Albemarle confirms further cuts at Western Australia lithium processing plant.
- 🚨 Umicore suspends construction of $2.76B battery materials plant in Ontario.
- 📊 Survey Says
- Economic activity in the US manufacturing sector contracted in July for the fourth consecutive month and the 20th time in the last 21 months.
- China’s PMI fell to 49.8 in July, down from 51.8 in June.
- 🏆 Golden Part
- Lam Research wins 2024 Best of Sensors Award in AI/Machine Learning
- Komatsu achieves major autonomous milestones by hauling more than 10 billion metric tons of material with 10 Komatsu autonomous trucks having achieved a benchmark of 100 thousand autonomous hours each.
- GM Arlington Assembly Celebrates 70th Anniversary and its 13 Millionth Vehicle.
- 🏢💸 Corporate Development
- Robot Software Maker Covariant Gets Takeover Inquiry From Amazon.
- 🏭💰 Production Planning
- GE Aerospace Investing $1 Billion to Expand and Upgrade MRO Facilities Worldwide
- Lubrizol Corporation plans to purchase a 120-acre plot in Aurangabad, India with a projected investment of approximately $200 million.
- 🏛️📜 Industrial Policy
- 🇺🇸 Glass, steel and backsheets: the supporting artists in the IRA’s manufacturing expansion.
- 🇮🇳 How India Is Starting a Chip Industry From Scratch
- 🏴 California Invests $27 Million in Innovative, First-in-the-Nation Port Data System Development
Assembly Line
This week's most influential Industry 4.0 media.
Redwire’s First-of-Its-Kind Component Manufacturing Facility Successfully Completes Pathfinder Mission
Redwire’s MSTIC facility recently returned to Earth after successfully completing operations on the International Space Station (ISS) for a groundbreaking pathfinder mission to demonstrate advanced in-space manufacturing techniques. Developed in partnership with the ISS National Laboratory and NASA’s In Space Production Applications Flight Demonstrations program, MSTIC is an autonomous semiconductor manufacturing platform that was launched to the ISS onboard Northrop Grumman’s 20th cargo resupply services mission (NG-20) in February 2024.
MSTIC is being developed to 3D print semiconductor devices and thin-film integrated coatings to explore the beneficial effects of microgravity on these structures. Operations during the first mission demonstrated elements of processing by Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) and Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). MSTIC includes a swappable production vacuum chamber, swappable gas cylinders, a crew serviceable computer, and high-voltage power supplies to produce a fully contained autonomous sputtering system.
How to Build the World's Most Powerful Satellite
Control One Debuts Advanced Physical AI Agent in a Forklift
Control One, a Bengaluru-based startup, has unveiled India’s first physical AI agent for the global market. This innovative AI agent, showcased in a newly released video, marks a significant milestone by autonomously handling materials in a warehouse, highlighting its advanced capabilities.
Control One’s operating system can be seamlessly integrated into existing warehouse equipment like pallet movers and forklifts. These AI-powered systems autonomously navigate and improve performance over time, setting a new standard for intelligent material movement.
AES debuts Maximo, the solar installation robot
The AES Corp. introduced this AI-powered robot that enhances solar installation speed, efficiency and safety. Maximo enhances the safety and scalability of solar installation by automating the heavy lifting for placing and attaching solar modules. The driving force behind automation in solar construction isn’t replacing jobs, but enhancing those jobs, working alongside crews, and speeding up overall install velocity for the industry.
AES will utilize Maximo in its construction of the 2 GW Bellefield project in Kern County, California, the largest solar-plus-storage project in the US, under contract with Amazon. Oak Ridge Solar project in Louisiana, also helping power Amazon operations, was a significant milestone in Maximo’s journey as its first utility-scale deployment.
Simplifying AI Deployment from the Cloud to Edge and Endpoint
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming every aspect of life. It is enhancing quality in industrial applications, enabling smart home systems, monitoring our safety as we work and play. Advances in technology have allowed us to run complex machine learning algorithms to tackle unique problems allowing those to be implemented also on embedded devices used in our daily life in home and industry. To enable scalable intelligence at all levels of the network, a decentralized intelligence architecture is needed. This means running cloud-independent inference engines on power-efficient or tiny computers within the edge and endpoints.
Special Sneak Peek inside Tesla's German Gigafactory!
New bio-based concrete admixture is scaling up production
A new biomass-based liquid admixture for concrete uniquely combines the benefits of traditional performance-enhancing additives with decarbonization. Hydrous bio-graphene oxide (hBGO), developed by AlterBiota, is a stable, high-solids dispersion that helps to improve strength and durability, reducing the amount of carbon-intensive and expensive Portland cement used, while also drastically reducing the carbon footprint via the use of carbon-negative feedstock. Unlike other lower-carbon concrete technologies like carbonation or supplemental cementitious materials, hBGO requires no modification to admixture dosing systems or batching practices. And other performance-enhancing additives, such as superplasiticizers, are significantly more carbon-intensive than hBGO, as they are derived from fossil-fuel feedstocks.
New Product Introduction
Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services
Pilot Plant Produces Climate-friendly Cement Clinker
Concrete production is one of the main sources of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. To limit such emissions, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is developing net-zero circular concrete. With the launch of a pilot plant for belite cement clinker, an important step in its production has now been tested in practice.
To produce belite cement clinker, the pilot plant uses an all-electric heating system powered by renewable energy and a carbon dioxide atmosphere, reducing the energy required for the process. “We can manage with a process temperature of 1000 instead of 1400 degrees Celsius in the rotary kiln,” Stemmermann said. Compared with conventional clinker production, the overall energy consumption is 40 percent lower. “The CO2 unavoidably emitted as a result of the limestone reaction in the kiln is captured and then bound to the recycled concrete in the second step of the process,” Stemmermann said. This second step is to be integrated in a future expansion of the pilot plant, which is currently capable of producing 100 kilograms of clinker per day.
Alphawave Semi Launches Industry’s First 3nm UCIe IP with TSMC CoWoS Packaging
Alphawave Semi (LSE: AWE), a global leader in high-speed connectivity and compute silicon for the world’s technology infrastructure, has launched the industry’s first 3nm successful silicon bring-up of Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe™) Die-to-Die (D2D) IP with TSMC’s Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS®) advanced packaging technology.
The complete PHY and Controller subsystem was developed in collaboration with TSMC and targets applications such as hyperscaler, high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Using the foundry’s CoWoS 2.5D silicon-interposer-based packaging, the fully integrated and highly configurable subsystem provides 8 Tbps/mm bandwidth density and reduces I/O complexity, power consumption and latency.
Business Transactions
This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.
Altana Closes $200M Series C to Enable the Public and Private Sectors to Take Command of Global Value Chains
Altana, the world’s first Value Chain Management System, today announced a $200 million Series C investment led by Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT). The funding round included participation from March Capital, Generation Investment Management, Salesforce Ventures, Friends and Family Capital, and each of Altana’s key existing investors, including GV (Google Ventures), Activate Capital, Floating Point, and OMERS Ventures. The funding brings Altana’s valuation to $1 billion.
Altana is tackling some of the world’s thorniest problems – from building economic security, to mitigating carbon emissions, to protecting critical industries and infrastructure. Its Value Chain Management System unlocks solutions that have never been possible before at scale by bringing applied AI to the infrastructure of global commerce. These include: the first-ever system to provide accurate Scope 3 carbon measurement; the ability to root out forced labor from customers’ supply chains; the ability to intelligently coordinate supply and demand across multiple tiers of the supply chain to reduce costs and working capital; the ability to price and insure against the risks of supply chain business interruptions; and, the ability to defend critical supply chains from geopolitical adversaries.
The world’s most important public and private sector organizations, including Maersk, Boston Scientific, ZF, the Lloyd’s Insurance Market, US Customs & Border Protection (US CBP), and multiple UK government agencies through the UK Global Supply Chain Intelligence Programme, all use Altana to manage their multi-tier, global value chains.
unspun Raises $32M in Oversubscribed Series B Funding to Transform Fashion Supply Chains with Groundbreaking 3D Weaving Technology
unspun, the industry leader in 3D weaving technology, announced $32M in an oversubscribed Series B funding round led by DCVC, with participation from Lowercarbon Capital, E12, Decathlon and SOSV. The funding will fuel the rapid scaling of unspun’s innovative 3D weaving technology, Vega™—designed to help brands realize a low-inventory, nearshore and automated supply-chain for woven products, which represent 57% of the total apparel market, —as the company expands its operations in Europe and North America.
Vega™ is the world’s first 3D weaving technology for apparel. It takes thousands of yarns and weaves them into garments in minutes, allowing for (almost) zero-waste, on-demand manufacturing. This technology unlocks scalable on-demand or low-inventory production.
TS Conductor raises $60 million from industry-leading investors to expand US production of high-capacity power lines
TS Conductor (TS), a US-based manufacturer of advanced electric power lines, today announced the close of a $60 million growth investment round led by Wellington Management. The funds will be used to open a second US production facility, which is part of the company’s plan to greatly increase production of its high-performance conductors in response to strong customer demand.
The oversubscribed investment round also included Quanta Services, Gates Frontier, Energy & Environment Investment, Inc., Blue Earth Capital, and Edison International, and repeat investors National Grid Partners, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources.
To meet rapidly-growing demand for its advanced conductors, TS Conductor is expanding its production capacity. The company’s existing ISO-certified facility in Southern California is operating at near-full capacity, and plans are under consideration to increase this facility’s output in the near term. The bulk of this funding round, however, will support an ambitious expansion east of the Mississippi River.
Applied Carbon Raises $21.5 Million to Deploy Groundbreaking Biochar Technology that Increases Soil Health and Sequesters Carbon
Applied Carbon, a technology company designing automated biochar production machines that convert in-field agricultural crop waste into biochar, today announced it has raised a $21.5 million Series A. The funding round was led by TO VC, with participation from Congruent Ventures, Grantham Foundation, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, S2G Ventures, Overture.vc, Wireframe Ventures, Autodesk Foundation, Anglo American, Susquehanna Foundation, US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good, and Elemental Excelerator. The funding will be used to deploy a fleet of biochar machines across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, delivering high durability carbon removal and agricultural services. The company was also recently named as a top-20 global finalist in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition and as a semifinalist in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) CO2 Removal Purchase Pilot Prize.
Applied Carbon’s technology utilizes a high-tech, fully self-contained trailer pulled behind a tractor that collects crop residue, processes it into biochar via high temperature pyrolysis before quenching it with water and supplementing it with nutrients and microbes as desired by the farmer. The final biochar product exits the machine and is spread directly onto the field, eliminating bulk material transport and drastically reducing its cost per ton. The machine can also operate in an efficient edge-of-field configuration for added flexibility to address diverse crop wastes all year long.
AeroShield Materials Announces Opening of New Manufacturing Facility, $5M Additional Funding to Produce Cutting-Edge, Energy Efficient Technology for Built Environment
AeroShield Materials, an MIT spin out developing cutting-edge technology for energy efficiency applications in the built environment, announced today the opening of their new manufacturing facility in Waltham, Massachusetts and the close of $5M in additional funding with participation from existing investors Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and MassVentures as well as new investor MassMutual Ventures. The funding will support AeroShield in scaling its business by enabling the company to expand its team to more than 30 employees in the 12,000 square-foot facility where it plans to manufacture full-sized products, including double pane windows.
AeroShield’s breakthrough transparent silica aerogel sheets are some of the most insulating materials ever created and can be added inside double-pane windows and doors to improve energy performance by up to 65%. The facility in Waltham will significantly expand the company’s capabilities with cutting-edge aerogel R&D labs, manufacturing equipment, assembly lines, and testing equipment.
Matereal Inc. Raises $4.5M Seed Round, To Lead the Fight Against Toxic Plastics
Matereal, a pioneering plastic replacements technology, proudly announces the successful closure of its $4.5 million seed funding round, led by the Collaborative Fund. This key investment propels Matereal into its next stage of development to bring a new environmentally safe plastic to market. The funds will support the company on its mission to decarbonize and detoxify the chemical plastic supply chain.
The technology powering Matereal’s transformative agenda is the commercialization of its groundbreaking chemical platform, Polaris™. This innovative non-isocyanate polyurethane (NIPU) is a monumental breakthrough, offering a sustainable and safe alternative to traditional polyurethane—a historically challenging plastic to decarbonize. Nearly every product sold to consumers contains polyurethane, from fashion to paints, but it is not a renewable resource and has limited, to no, end-of-life options. With the global polyurethane market reaching nearly $90 billion annually, the need to address its carbon-intensive and toxic nature is paramount, and Matereal is on a path to replace it.
New Funding Fuels Tracktile’s Vision for Smart Manufacturing Software
Tracktile, an innovative technology SaaS startup, is excited to announce the successful closing of its pre-seed financing round. This $575,000 investment will fuel the company’s mission to empower manufacturers with complete visibility into their operations. Tracktile offers cloud-based manufacturing software tailored specifically for the food and beverage industry with plans to move to other manufacturing verticals.
The pre-seed funding round was led by BDC Capital’s Seed Venture Fund and Island Capital Partners, with participation from the New Brunswick Innovation Fund. This round of funding will enable Tracktile to accelerate its product development, expand its team, and scale its operations to meet growing market demand.
Blue Yonder Acquires One Network Enterprises to Unlock an Agile, Interconnected Supply Chain Ecosystem
Blue Yonder, the leader in digital supply chain transformations, today announced the closing of its acquisition of One Network Enterprises (One Network) at an enterprise value of approximately $839 million. The acquisition gives Blue Yonder customers the ability to collaborate and share data – from inventory levels to raw and finished goods materials movement – in real time across all trading partners up and down the supply chain.
With the addition of One Network’s commercial technology, Blue Yonder can now offer customers a multi-enterprise, multi-tier network ecosystem; artificial intelligence (AI)-powered supply chain assistants to identify, monitor, analyze, and resolve problems; and a simplified process to onboard and work with trading partners. Real-time inventory and capacity views help customers match supply and demand, detect and resolve problems, and orchestrate resources across their network of trading partners. One Network will continue to independently service and provide tailored technology solutions to its government customers.
AI Autonomous Manufacturing Alliance Launched to Transform Korean Manufacturing Landscape
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy held the “AI Autonomous Manufacturing Alliance Launch Ceremony”’ on July 22, marking a significant milestone in the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the manufacturing sector. The event, attended by Minister Lee Chang-yang and over 250 representatives from industry, academia, and research institutions, showcased the collaborative efforts to revolutionize productivity, safety, and environmental sustainability in manufacturing.
At the launch ceremony, industry-leading companies such as Hyundai Motor, LG Electronics, DN Solutions, POSCO, EcoPro, GS Caltex, KAI, and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries presented their strategies for spreading AI autonomous manufacturing within their sectors. These strategies aim to significantly improve productivity and quality through AI and to extend AI across the entire value chain, including partner companies. By monitoring equipment and processes in real-time and analyzing data with AI, these companies plan to establish production systems that optimize work schedules and resource allocation, while also reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.