Guidewheel
Canvas Category Hardware : Information Technology : Machine Health
This is the era of AI and the “industrial internet” – complex systems that can help huge factories run at peak efficiency. But that’s for the elite one percent of manufacturers. What about the rest? Guidewheel is on a mission to empower all the world’s factories to reach sustainable peak performance. Our plug-and-play FactoryOps platform makes the power of the cloud accessible to any factory, inspired by the simple, universal truth that every machine on the factory floor has a power cord. Guidewheel clips onto any machine to turn its real-time “heartbeat” into a connected, actively learning system that empowers teams to reduce lost production time, increase throughput, and perform better and better over time. The more teams use Guidewheel, the bigger the impact—for their business and for the planet. Founded out of Stanford University and backed by Greycroft, Guidewheel went through Stanford’s Launchpad as well as top accelerator StartX. Guidewheel’s product has been recognized with prizes from Stanford and MIT, and the team brings both manufacturing expertise and success building world-class cloud software at scale.
Assembly Line
Guidewheel raises $31M Series B to scale AI-powered FactoryOps across factory floors globally
Guidewheel, the leader in AI-powered FactoryOps, raised an oversubscribed $31 million Series B funding round led by Decarbonization Partners, a partnership between BlackRock and Temasek. Ecolab, Rethink Impact, and GSBackers also participated in this round, alongside existing investors Greycroft and Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), among others.
Guidewheel provides the first way to bring AI to the factory floor at scale—every machine, in every factory. Inspired by the universal truth that every machine on the factory floor uses power, Guidewheel starts with non-invasive sensors that simply clip like a smartwatch on the power draw of any machine to bring its real-time “heartbeat” into a connected, AI-powered FactoryOps platform. Guidewheel empowers teams to reduce lost production time, increase efficiency, and enhance performance over time, delivering fast, concrete ROI through its technology, with customers reporting an average of 41% more production from their existing assets. Within the same FactoryOps platform, Guidewheel builds in all the tools manufacturers need to track and manage energy and carbon towards sustainability goals.
Guidewheel’s recent momentum has been marked by acquiring some of the world’s leading manufacturers as customers, including General Motors, Igloo, Kimberly Clark, JELD-WEN, DRiV/Tenneco, CEMIX, TricorBraun, Reliance Steel & Aluminum, Madison Industries, BorgWarner, U.S. Steel, Berry Global, Myers Industries, and Johnson & Johnson.
Machine Monitoring Becomes Simpler And More Affordable Than Ever
What makes all this possible is a new application of a simple technology—the current transformer, essentially an amperage meter. As Dunford explains, maintenance engineers have used these small, inexpensive devices for decades to detect, for example, when a machine starts drawing excess power, possibly indicating a need for maintenance or even an impending malfunction.
Guidewheel uses the same information to detect when a machine is running or stopped, how long it has been running or not, and the number and period of cyclical operations. In the case of continuous operations such as extrusion, the level of current draw can be correlated with production rate.