Podium Automation, the Brooklyn-based manufacturer reimagining how industrial control panels are designed and built, announced it has raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Construct Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Transition Ventures, Sunflower Capital and Banter Capital.
The round brings Podium’s total funding to more than $23 million and will fuel a rapid scale-up of manufacturing capacity to meet growing demand for quick-turn control panels from customers ranging from scale-ups to Fortune 500 manufacturers. As part of the financing, Dayna Grayson, co-founder and managing partner at Construct Capital, will join Podium’s Board of Directors.
Industrial control panels are the central nervous system of automated production and infrastructure and govern how equipment starts, stops, communicates and operates safely. Historically, control panel design and fabrication has been a bottleneck for manufacturers: lead times often exceed 12 weeks and quality depends heavily on the tacit knowledge of veteran technicians.
Podium designs and manufactures control panels in less than 4 weeks using a software-enabled process that reduces time and errors. Digital models take the place of hand-drawn schematics, automated fabrication and intuitive work instructions handle physical assembly and each panel is fully validated in Podium’s UL 508A certified facility before shipping.
Podium’s proprietary software streamlines the end-to-end process of panel design-build by connecting customer requirements, eCAD design tools and shop floor instructions. Instead of relying on an electrical engineer’s knowledge of a vast component landscape, Podium’s software intelligently selects and connects electrical components based on customer and UL requirements. Panels are not only designed for manufacturability, but also for speed and availability of components in the upstream supply chain.
“Control panels are everywhere, but the way they’re designed and built hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades,” said Jamie Niu Serota, co-founder and CEO of Podium Automation. “We founded Podium to build the vendor we always wished we had. Ordering a control panel should be fast, accurate and transparent. At Podium, faster and better are the same thing.”
“The industrial economy runs on essential components like control panels and the legacy supply chain behind them is exactly the kind of foundational infrastructure Construct was built to invest in,” said Dayna Grayson, co-founder and managing partner at Construct Capital. “Jamie, Jacob and the Podium team have created the modern vendor this category has been waiting for and the demand they’re already seeing makes it clear how much the market needs what they’re building.”
“Podium is an excellent example of what happens when world-class software meets a foundational industrial category,” said Oliver Hsu, partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Jamie and Jacob are founders who understand both the legacy world of control panel manufacturing and how to rebuild it from first principles. The result is a combination of product and operational excellence that meets the current moment for American reindustrialization.”
With the new capital, Podium will rapidly expand manufacturing capacity, grow its engineering and operations teams and continue investing in the software platform that powers its design and fabrication process.
