Craft Ventures leads investment in manufacturing startup used by high-tech manufacturers including Joby Aviation, Astra, and Reliable Robotics
First Resonance, a Los Angeles-based start-up transforming manufacturing with its Factory Operating System, ION, announced a $14M Series A investment led by Craft Ventures and joined by existing investors including Blue Bear Capital, Fika Ventures, and Stage VP. The ION manufacturing platform has been deployed across more than two-dozen companies including Joby Aviation, Astra, Reliable Robotics, and some of the world’s largest manufacturers. This latest funding will be used to scale ION to help customers increase production rates and product lines to meet global demand for manufactured products. With this round, Craft Ventures’ Partner, Michael Tam will also join the First Resonance Board.
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“ION plays a key role in our manufacturing operation as our primary shop floor execution system,” said Joe Brennan, Manufacturing Lead at Joby Aviation. “The in-built flexibility of their product enables us to execute both prototype and fully conforming manufacturing operations at the same time, while the rapid rollout of new and requested features supports rapid and sustainable growth. We look forward to working with First Resonance as we take the next steps on our journey to delivering sustainable air travel.”
Since its launch in January 2020, First Resonance has seen 5x YoY growth as an increasing number of manufacturers adopt ION and existing customers expand their use of the platform to additional employees and departments including management and supply chain. The company plans to triple its head count in 2022 across product engineering, sales, marketing, and operations to meet rising demand.
“Craft Ventures and First Resonance share a common vision of the power of software to transform traditionally underserved markets like manufacturing,” said Michael Tam, Partner, Craft Ventures. “With a deep understanding of the painful problems facing modern manufacturers and a product that addresses them, we believe First Resonance will lead this growing software sector.”
First Resonance has a front row seat to the manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics challenges modern manufacturers are facing. As the world transitions to electric transportation and opens up airspace for new types of flying transportation, the challenges of supply chain backups, geopolitical tensions, and an increasing need to meet environmental and sustainability standards, managing an efficient manufacturing supply chain is incredibly difficult.
After experiencing bottlenecks building modern hardware products using standard manufacturing processes at SpaceX, JPL, and Toyota, the First Resonance team developed the ION manufacturing platform to help engineers move quickly, collaborate with their teams efficiently, and make decisions automatically. ION is equipping companies that are taking on some of the hardest challenges with an easy-to-use platform to help them build in a more flexible and dynamic way – the path an increasing number of companies are taking to overcome these challenges. The platform is addressing the needs of the manufacturing execution system market which is anticipated to grow to $14.9B by 2025. This figure is being rapidly accelerated given the massive shift in supply chains brought on by a constantly shifting geopolitical landscape and accelerated by COVID-19.
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“With today’s dynamic manufacturing environment, speed to understanding is everything,” said Karan Talati, CEO, First Resonance. “People and devices are more connected than ever before and taking advantage of that connectivity requires a completely different way of structuring manufacturing – an industry that has been stagnant for too long. We’re excited to bring Craft Ventures and our existing investors on the journey to help our customers solve this decade’s biggest challenges.”
First Resonance Expands ION Platform with New Functionality to Help Manufactures Automate their Supply Chains
After building its workflow products to help manufacturing operators build great hardware on the factory floor and coordinate with engineering, First Resonance is introducing a number of features to help manufacturers manage a complex supply chain from parts purchase, to receipt, to inventory management. With these new features, engineers, certification auditors, quality teams, and more are able to quickly determine how to build products faster. The new ION Autoplan functionality will collect and analyze multiple complex signals and a large amount of data within existing inventory, the supply chain, purchase orders, and work in progress (WIP) to give manufacturers a forecast of what they need to do next to deliver their products on time.