Crosser, the leading low-code platform for streaming analytics, automation and integration for industrial IoT, has announced its latest funding round of €3 million in new capital. The round was led by NTT DOCOMO Ventures and Montan-Ventures-Saar, with existing investors Industrifonden, Spintop Ventures, 42 Cap, Almi Invest and Norrlandsfonden also participating.
Gartner reports that low-code technologies will remain on a strong trajectory for 2021 and beyond, as it enables companies to rapidly build and deploy use cases without reliance on professional programmers.
“The complexity of IoT makes the skills barrier higher than in most other enterprise verticals. We like to argue that the value of low-code platforms is even higher for industrial companies,” says Martin Thunman, CEO and co-founder of Crosser. “With this financing round we aim to bring more innovative low-code solutions to the market, all aimed to help industrial companies move faster in their digitalization journey by putting the power of innovation in the hands of non-developers, often called citizen developers.”
Crosser has a unique hybrid architecture that allows companies to innovate centrally with a low-code approach, while also helping them to easily deploy the software anywhere, on the edge, on-premise or in the cloud. The hybrid architecture combines the best of two worlds: the simplicity of modern cloud technologies and the secure and low-cost processing of data close to the data source, on premise or on an edge device.
NTT DOCOMO Ventures is the investment arm of NTT Group, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. NTT Data, another NTT Group entity, is one of the world’s largest systems integrators. Telecom companies and enterprise system integrators are two major stakeholders industrial IoT.
“We believe that the visual programming capabilities that Crosser’s low-code platform offers can play a key role in accelerating the adoption of industrial IoT,” says Takayuki Inagawa, President and CEO of NTT DOCOMO Ventures. “We look forward to partnering with Crosser to promote digitalization processes of manufacturing companies, both in Japan and globally.”
Montan-Ventures-Saar is a venture firm with roots in the Saarland Steel industry in Germany. As the ventures arm of the Montan-Stiftung-Saar trust it invests in disruptive technologies along the process industry.
“In our own steel companies, we experience the challenges and complexities of industrial IoT,” says Reinhard Störmer, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Montan-Stiftung-Saar. “The combination of the low-code approach and the ability to run the Crosser streaming analytics platform in production processes is key to enabling fast and secure innovation in this field.”
Martin Thunman concludes: “In addition to continued investor support, having two new investors onboard will bring deep industry understanding to the table, giving us access to even more markets.”
