United Manufacturing Hub secures 5 million euros

The Cologne-based start-up United Manufacturing Hub (UMH) has raised 5 million euros in a financing round. The round is led by KOMPAS VC, other investors are seed + speed Ventures, Sustainable Future Ventures (SFV Capital) and Archimedes New Ventures. Several well-known business angels are also participating, including Jan Oberhauser (founder and CEO of n8n) and Jeff Hammerbacher (founder of Cloudera).

UMH intends to use the fresh capital to further its mission of establishing an open and scalable data infrastructure for the global manufacturing industry. The focus is on the further development of the open source platform, the expansion of the engineering team and accelerated expansion in Europe.

Industry struggles with fragmented production data

Despite high investments in digital tools and AI-based automation, many industrial companies continue to fail due to a fundamental challenge: production data is stored in proprietary systems, is fragmented across machines and applications and is hardly interoperable. While the global manufacturing software market is worth more than 50 billion US dollars, without a unified database, many digitalization and AI initiatives fall short of expectations.

Factories today work with decades-old software. Data resides in proprietary protocols, is fragmented across different vendors and often lacks the necessary context that real-world use cases and AI require.

Alexander Krüger, CEO and co-founder of United Manufacturing Hub

This is precisely where United Manufacturing Hub comes in. The company addresses the industry's structural data problem and aims to create a resilient foundation for data-driven factories.

Open source approach with unified namespace

The core of the UMH platform is a so-called unified namespace, a real-time data hub that brings together production data from machines, sensors and IT systems. Instead of individual point-to-point integrations, a standardized, scalable data structure is created that can be accessed by different applications.

The platform cleanses and contextualizes industrial data and makes it available as a central data hub. On this basis, operational key figures, energy and resource monitoring, condition monitoring and AI-based applications can be implemented - without complex integration projects.

Used by established industrial companies

UMH is already being used by well-known industrial companies from various sectors. Users include HiPP, Edeka and Böllhoff. The aim is to enable factories to implement digital use cases productively and flexibly connect new data sources more quickly.

According to the users, the platform significantly reduces the integration effort and accelerates the introduction of new digital solutions in the production environment.

Expansion of the platform and European expansion planned

With the current funding, United Manufacturing Hub plans to expand the platform's connectivity, drive forward advanced data modeling and further develop AI agents. At the same time, the partner network of consulting and technology companies is to be expanded.

UMH also intends to make targeted investments in engineering and go-to-market teams in order to accelerate its expansion into other European markets and position itself as a leading provider of industrial data infrastructure in the long term.