Engineering company Sandvik has reached an agreement to acquire a minority stake in the privately owned American software company Oqton for an undisclosed fee.
Founded in 2017, Oqton is a leading provider of AI-powered manufacturing solutions that allows manufacturers to manage, optimise, and automate their manufacturing workflows.
The San Francisco-based company, which owns three R&D centres located in Belgium, Denmark and China, provides a secure end-to-end cloud-based manufacturing platform that links data across the complete manufacturing ecosystem, from design to production, to logistics.
Commenting on the acquisition, Sandvik’s President and CEO Stefan Widing said the investment was in line with the company’s strategic agenda to broaden its offering in digital manufacturing.
“We are looking forward to working with Oqton and finding ways to expand our offering for increased customer productivity by creating new products that take advantage of Sandvik’s extensive know-how about manufacturing processes and Oqton’s AI-powered manufacturing solutions,” Mr Widing added.
The relationship with Oqton will be managed by Sandvik Manufacturing Solutions’ division Design & Planning Automation, which is led by Mr Mathias Johansson.
“Oqton’s solution targets inefficiencies and waste in the manufacturing workflow,” Mr Johansson explained.
“We believe that our relationship with Oqton will give us further opportunities to define and reduce waste throughout the entire manufacturing process.
“We share the same desire to automate workflows and make our customers more efficient.”
