Konux

KONUX
legal form	GmbH
founding	2014
Seat	Munich , Germany
management	Andreas Kunze ( CEO )
Branch	software
Website	www.konux.com/de/
As of November 11, 2018

Konux (own spelling: KONUX) is an IoT start-up from Munich. With the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the company develops sensor-based systems that enable predictive maintenance of industrial plants. Konux is headquartered in Munich and is registered as an American stock corporation (Inc.) in Palo Alto, California.

history

Konux was founded in 2014 by Andreas Kunze, Dennis Humhal and Vlad Lata. The three students from different disciplines got to know each other in a scholarship program at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and developed the basic idea there of using sensor data to increase the availability of systems. Together with analysis software based on artificial intelligence, they formed a system with sensors that can monitor facilities and thus predict maintenance requirements. The founders put the focus on railway technology and especially on switches.

For their project, they received initial funding (seed phase) of $ 2 million from investors in Silicon Valley. These included the Google investor Andreas von Bechtolsheim and the financier New Enterprise Associates. In the next round of funding (Series-A), the founders raised another $ 16 million. One of the largest venture capital donors in Germany, the MIG Fund, also took part in this round . In the spring of 2018, the company received $ 20 million growth financing (Series B) from the same investors.

The Konux sensor system has been in use on switches in the Deutsche Bahn high-speed network since 2015. They should increase the availability of the route network and thus improve the punctuality of trains. In mid-2017, the Swedish railway company SJ ordered 39 systems. In August 2018, the management was expanded to include Sébastien Schikora, Benjamin Jansen and Thomas Kolar.

product

The Konux sensor system continuously shows railway operators the status of their turnouts. For this purpose, sensors are installed in the track bed or in the switches. There they measure temperatures and vibrations and transfer this data to a computer. Thanks to artificial intelligence, deviations from the normal state or failures are identified and evaluated by comparing the data from the continuous state monitoring with the "digital footprint" of a healthy switch. In this way, possible failures can be predicted and maintenance work planned. The system can be installed according to the same pattern in all countries for all rail operators. The technology is not limited to rail transport. Other possible uses are, for example, pumps or machine tools.

Awards

• June 2018: CogX Award in the category "Outstanding Innovations with Artificial Intelligence in Sensor Technology" at the CogX Artificial Intelligence Conference in London. The international prize is awarded annually by the AI ​​platform CognitionX.
• June 2017: Presidential Entrepreneurship Award 2017 from the Technical University of Munich. Every year, the prize is awarded to a TUM “spin-off” that can demonstrate great growth potential and secure financing.
• February 2017: Inclusion in the list of technology pioneers of the World Economic Forum (WEF). This makes Konux one of the 30 most important technology start-ups in the world for the WEF in 2017.
• July 2016: "The Spark - the German digital award". The prize is awarded annually by the business newspaper Handelsblatt and the management consultancy McKinsey.
• October 2016: “German Mobility Award” from the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) and the “Germany - Land of Ideas” initiative. The prize is intended to highlight the opportunities that digitization offers for mobility in the future.

literature

• Industrial IoT and the age of predictive maintenance. Gaskell, Adi. Huffington Post. November 14, 2016.
• Power of the new - How young entrepreneurs use digitization. Burfeind, Sophie and Dostert, Elisabeth. Southgerman newspaper. July 2nd, 2017. (online)
• The defect predictors. Hubik, Franz. Handelsblatt. April 29, 2016.
• The conquerors of the digital measurement world. Koehn, Rudiger. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. April 18, 2016.

Web links

• The company: Konux GmbH [1]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Innovative sensor & analytics solutions for railways & industry. Retrieved January 14, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Another million for sensor start-up Konux. In: www.gruenderszene.de. April 7, 2017, accessed January 14, 2020 . 
3. ↑ KONUX secures US $ 20 million in Series B financing round. In: Munich Startup. April 24, 2018, accessed on January 14, 2020 (German). 
4. ^ Deutsche Bahn. Start-ups.
5. ^ Swedish railway company SJ.
6. ↑ KONUX received the prestigious CogX Award in London. In: www.konux.com. June 19, 2018, accessed January 14, 2020 . 
7. ↑ Everything at a glance with smart sensors. In: www.tum.de. June 30, 2017, accessed January 14, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Introducing the Technology Pioneers 2017. World Economic Forum.
9. ↑ Award ceremony “The Spark”: relayr wins the German digital award. In: www.handelsblatt.com. October 10, 2016, accessed January 14, 2020 . 
10. ↑ Konux - Smart rail infrastructure by sensor data analysis on deutscher-mobilitaetspreis.de, October 20, 2016th