Connected engineering pioneer Elise raises €14.5 million

Munich — The Bremen-based start-up Elise has successfully closed its Series A finan­cing round with 14.5 million euros. The total amount is provi­ded by lead inves­tor Spark Capi­tal toge­ther with inves­tors UVC Part­ners, BMW i Ventures, Cherry Ventures and Venture Stars. The goal of the funding is to estab­lish the low code stan­dard in engi­nee­ring, as well as to expand the appli­ca­tion areas to other engi­nee­ring domains.

The start-up foun­ded in 2018 around the foun­ders Dr. Moritz Maier, Sebas­tian Möller and Daniel Siegel convin­ced the VCs with its open Connec­ted Engi­nee­ring plat­form for networked, digi­tal and auto­ma­ted product deve­lo­p­ment. With a back­ground in bionic rese­arch and offe­ring engi­nee­ring services, the foun­ding team deve­lo­ped a solu­tion for their projects to over­come the chal­lenges of manual and repe­ti­tive deve­lo­p­ment tasks. Soon, custo­mers wanted not only tech­ni­cal services, but also access to the soft­ware solution.

“With the help of the Series A funding, we are making signi­fi­cant progress toward our goal of beco­ming the low code stan­dard in engi­nee­ring. The ease of use of our visual programming language allows engi­neers to map and auto­mate deve­lo­p­ment proces­ses in a very short time,” explains Dr. Moritz Maier. “With our open plat­form, we enable engi­neers to trans­fer the agile and effi­ci­ent methods of soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment to hard­ware deve­lo­p­ment. This auto­ma­tes manual and repe­ti­tive tasks and enables compa­nies to manage the growing comple­xity of product deve­lo­p­ment in the face of incre­asing cost and inno­va­tion pressures.”

“Thanks to Elise, the idea of Connec­ted Engi­nee­ring is alre­ady part of ever­y­day life at renow­ned compa­nies such as BMW, Daim­ler and Airbus. When Elise custo­mers achieve up to 90 percent time savings in deve­lo­p­ment proces­ses, it’s much more than a proof of concept. It’s the future of engi­nee­ring that Elise custo­mers can parti­ci­pate in today,” said Alex Finkel­stein, Gene­ral Part­ner at Spark Capi­tal.

Benja­min Erhart, Part­ner at UVC Part­ners, under­lines the importance of the solu­tion: “Elise has alre­ady funda­men­tally chan­ged the way products are deve­lo­ped today. We didn’t think at the begin­ning that rapid itera­ti­ons, lever­aging of expe­ri­ence and easy inte­gra­tion of exis­ting tools would have such a huge impact on product deve­lo­p­ment: The impro­ve­ments Elise has been able to achieve with its first well-known custo­mers, both in terms of deve­lo­p­ment time and part perfor­mance, are incre­di­ble. We are convin­ced that the Elise plat­form will soon be the prefer­red tool for engi­neers in their day-to-day operations.”

Elise’s custo­mers include BMW Group, Brose Group, EDAG Engi­nee­ring, Hyun­dai Motor Group, Toyota Gazoo Racing and MAN Truck & Bus.

About UVC Partners

UVC Part­ners is a Munich and Berlin based early-stage venture capi­tal firm inves­t­ing in Euro­pean B2B start-ups within the enter­prise soft­ware, indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and mobi­lity sectors. The fund typi­cally invests between €0.5 million and €10 million at the outset and up to €30 million in total per company. The port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team as well as from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading center for inno­va­tion and busi­ness crea­tion. With over 300 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. This colla­bo­ra­tion allows UVC Part­ners to provide start­ups with unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial part­ners. www.uvcpartners.com

About Elise

Deve­lo­ped by engi­neers for engi­neers: The foun­ders have provi­ded engi­nee­ring services at the Alfred Wege­ner Insti­tute for over 10 years and have desi­gned a graphi­cal programming language to help you design and manage your projects more effi­ci­ently. www.elise.de