Hamburg, March 10th, 2022 – The Hamburg-based software company Cybus closes its Series A funding round with eight million euros, led by auditing and consultancy firm PwC Germany through PwC’s own investment company PwC Holdings Germany GmbH. With its high-availability Smart Factory software, Cybus provides the most advanced solution for digitizing industrial manufacturing.

Renowned companies and industry leaders invest in Cybus

The Series A funding round brings Cybus a total of eight million euros in additional capital to continue the company’s growth phase. The venture round is led by private equity firm PwC Holdings Germany GmbH, which focuses on strengthening industrial innovation to make European industry fit for the future through digital transformation. In addition to PwC, the former CEO of Dürr AG Ralf Dieter and the former CEO of the Siemens Business Unit Factory Automation Ralf-Michael Franke are now also investing in the company. Cybus receives further growth capital from its existing shareholders such as the btov Industrial Technologies Fund, the CEO of SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG Henrik Schunk, the Hamburg entrepreneur Andreas Pfannenberg and the btov private investor network. With the new capital, Cybus focuses on collaboration: In addition to building an ecosystem of integration and application partners, the company will invest in features, tools and processes that will revolutionize collaboration between manufacturing, IT and business stakeholders for the rapid and sustainable implementation of Industrial IoT use cases.

High-availability data architecture as a strategic competitive advantage

“In the realization of smart factory concepts, the connection of the two worlds, the so-called OT/IT convergence, is an essential prerequisite for the efficient connectivity of machines and systems. In the digital transformation, establishing this connection is one of the greatest challenges for many companies,” says Matthias Odrobina, Managing Director of PwC Holdings Germany GmbH. “Cybus’ software solution solves exactly this problem. It acts as a technology-neutral mediator and overcomes typical compatibility barriers between different systems. We look forward to supporting Cybus as an investor and partner in the upcoming growth phase to address this solution in the market,” Odrobina adds.

Matthias Odrobina, Managing Director of PwC Holdings Germany GmbH

A smart factory is characterized by a production environment that makes all information available and usable through universal connectivity. It enables companies to continuously increase the efficiency and quality of their production processes. Following this objective, the software solution from Cybus creates a central and local data infrastructure that connects production and IT systems independently of vendors. With an integrated security solution, the Smart Factory software is also suitable for production-critical systems. It ensures that factories retain unrestricted data sovereignty and it avoids production downtime. The product empowers companies to digitize their manufacturing autonomously, independent of cloud or other third-party providers. With the forward-looking technology for process automation, users efficiently carry out area-wide rollouts and scale their digital projects across plants.

“With Cybus, our customers make a long-term, strategic decision. We are not talking about pilot projects anymore; we are talking about digital rollouts across entire factories – without interrupting production. PwC as an investor is a big step for us to strengthen our customers’ trust. Because just like us, PwC follows the mission of independence. Our customers digitize their production autonomously and, in addition to gaining absolute data sovereignty, they also achieve independence from major manufacturers and vendors, as the technology-neutral layer overcomes typical compatibility barriers,” said Peter Sorowka, CEO of Cybus.

Peter Sorowka, CEO of Cybus

The 360-degree perspective for digital production 

As a member of the Industrial Cloud Community and with pioneering references in the automotive industry, Cybus proves that its Smart Factory data infrastructure is tailored to the challenging market needs:

“For seven years, Cybus has been successfully working with those Smart Factory technologies for which the market momentum has just arrived. While the competition is still looking for solutions to connect automation and information technologies, Cybus has long been a specialist in edge-based OT/IT convergence and high availability in digital production.”

Robert Gallenberger, Partner beim auf Industrietechnologien fokussierten VC Fonds Matterwave Ventures

With the new series A funding round, the company of 30 employees will therefore make it even faster and easier for enterprise customers to use the software. In addition, Cybus is placing a strong focus on empowering its customers: The planned further refinements of the software will significantly reduce user onboarding time. With a more user-friendly interface, it will also ensure accessibility for small and medium-sized businesses. Cybus’ new resources will create a data foundation for all digitization initiatives and a 360-degree experience where factories benefit from a strong partner network, a user community with educational materials, support and scalable processes.

On track for growth with leading expertise

Cybus GmbH was founded in 2015 by Peter Sorowka (CEO), Marius Schmeding and Pierre Manière. In close partnership, Cybus is accompanied by its advisory board of internationally experienced and recognized experts from the fields of automation, robotics, industrial manufacturing and innovation management. In addition to PwC, Ralf Dieter, former CEO of Dürr AG, Ralf-Michael Franke, former CEO of the Siemens Business Unit Factory Automation and Henrik Schunk, CEO of SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG, engage not only financially but also with their experience and network. The software company anticipates that it will almost double its number of employees by the end of the year and triple its annual sales compared to the previous year.

About Cybus

The software company Cybus enables industrial manufacturers to efficiently connect and automate their production. Its software “Cybus Connectware” leverages real-time data from the production environment irrespective of its vendors or applications. As a result, factories achieve sustainable competitive advantages such as increased efficiency and quality of the production processes. At the same time, the integrated security solution of the cloud-independent software maintains absolute data sovereignty. Cybus Connectware is used as the central infrastructure component of the Smart Factory architecture by European medium-sized businesses up to the automotive industry. More details at www.cybus.io.

Über PwC

At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 156 countries with over 295,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com.

PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

About btov Industrial Technologies SCS SICAR

btov Industrial Technologies is a European VC fund that supports hardware and software companies with innovations for the entire industrial value chain. The focus is on increasing value creation, resource efficiency and digitalization. The experienced team with extensive technology and sector expertise focuses on robotics, industry 4.0, IoT, cyber security, electronics & photonics, additive manufacturing, energy storage and quantum technology.

With a fund size of EUR 100m, it typically participates in Seed and Series A funding rounds across Europe with initial investments between EUR 1 – 3m. By participating in follow-on rounds, up to EUR 10m per portfolio company can be raised.

For further information please visit https://btov.vc/industrial-tech-fund/ .