MakeTime Inc., an online platform offering machine capacity for immediate purchase, today announced a $2.65 million Series A round of funding led by Almaz Capital with participation from Kentucky Science & Technology Corporation (KSTC) and MakeTime’s early investors.
Almaz contributed “more than $2 million” to the round, the fund’s PR Director Irina Goryacheva told East-West Digital News, with Investment Director Daniil Stolyarov joining MakeTime’s board of directors.
MakeTime “makes reserving time on a machine as simple as booking a plane ticket.” Participants can buy and sell machine time by machine type, required/available hours, hourly rate, material type and date range.
“We are fueling a new industrial revolution in U.S. manufacturing,” the startup claims.
The concept of purchasing manufacturing capacity digitally and by the hour is unprecedented, says MakeTime CEO and Founder Drura Parrish: “Manufacturers are still invoicing with pencil and paper. There is a huge shift in consumer demographics and it’s only a matter of time before current supply chain models are no longer sustainable. MakeTime is the solution where the focus is on-demand and just-in-time coupled with flexibility.”
The company launched to the public in November 2014. Since then MakeTime claims to have added over 400 manufacturers to the platform, representing more than $2.5 billion in buyer-side demand and over 2 million hours of capacity on quality computer numerical control (CNC) machines.
Based in Moscow and Silicon Valley, Almaz Capital invests across at the early stage in in the fields of enterprise solutions, Internet of Things, digital media and sensor technology. Its portfolio includes market leaders such as Sensity (Internet of Things), Good Data (Business Intelligence), Jelastic (‘Cloudifying’ application development), GridGain (In-Memory Computing), Cinarra (Mobile advertising), and Yandex. The fund’s investors include Cisco, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group.
