Swedish AI Company Buddywise Raises €3.5M to Prevent Workplace Accidents in Europe
This week marks a significant milestone for Buddywise, a Stockholm-originated innovator reshaping the landscape of workplace safety through artificial intelligence, as they herald the closure of a robust €3.5 million seed funding round.
Spearheaded by the Helsinki-based industrial tech fund Kvanted, alongside the data and AI-centric J12 fund, the round also witnessed the reinforcement from steadfast backers Aligned and Antler. The investment tableau was further enriched by the involvement of illustrious angel investors, notably Hans Stråberg of Atlas Copco and SKF, Ramudden Global’s progenitor Hans-Olov Blom, and Soundcloud’s visionary Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss.
This capital infusion propels Buddywise into a dynamic phase of augmenting its team with premier commercial and technological talents. It also primes the company to expand its client network, spanning multinational industrial corporations. This strategic expansion is poised to catalyze Buddywise’s pan-European commercial foray.
The escalating global urgency surrounding workplace health and safety is underscored by alarming statistics from the International Labor Organization: an estimated three million workers succumb annually to occupational hazards and ailments. The toll extends to over 395 million grave accidents each year, inflicting enduring harm on the global workforce. These tragic incidents and their consequent disability-adjusted life years inflict a staggering 6% dent in the world’s GDP. (source) Closer to home, the European Union grappled with 2.9 million non-fatal work mishaps in 2021 alone, resulting in extended work absences, compounded by over 3000 mortalities.
Buddywise is at the vanguard of this battle for safer workplaces. Their groundbreaking approach marries artificial intelligence with computer vision, yielding a system that instantaneously identifies and responds to safety hazards. The platform’s integration with existing camera networks enables real-time risk alerts, facilitating proactive measures by safety personnel. The perpetual data aggregation equips them with invaluable insights for ongoing hazard mitigation. Such pioneering technology is set to revolutionize safety protocols in industrial environments throughout Europe and potentially globally.
Everybody should be able to return home unharmed after a day’s work, so we can’t accept the status quo. Every accident can be prevented and with Buddywise Operational and Safety leaders can finally get the real-time data they need to do so.
said Lamin Faye, co-founder and CEO at Buddywise.
The new funding means that we can bring more customers towards their zero injury vision and we will invest heavily into our ability to enable learning and action based on our data-driven insights.
Emmet King, a Partner at J12, extols the advancements in computer vision models, crediting them with transformative capabilities in image classification and object detection. These technological leaps are pivotal in combatting workplace dangers and are poised to supplant traditional safety methodologies like reporting apps and sensor-based systems. King lauds Buddywise’s leadership and vision in steering the industrial world towards a zero-injury future.
Maria Wasastjerna, Kvanted’s Founding Partner, echoes these sentiments, underscoring the paramount importance of safety in the industrial realm. She highlights how Buddywise is spearheading the digital renaissance of industrial safety, using their avant-garde computer vision technology to preempt and avert life-threatening accidents on the production floor.
Lamin and Yigit are a highly experienced founding team committed to addressing a major challenge – workplace safety. This is a practical application of AI and computer vision that is already saving lives and helping to avoid injuries and has the potential to impact thousands of lives across Europe and around the world. We are delighted to have backed Buddywise from day zero and have every confidence in their future success.
comments Oscar Westergard, Partner at Antler.
Buddywise’s freshly secured funds will fuel its quest for elite commercial and technical professionals, catalyze the expansion of its industrial client network, and ignite its commercial spread across Europe. Their solution is already operational at various industrial sites in Sweden, Finland, Latvia, and Poland, spanning sectors from infrastructure to pulp and paper.
The journey of Buddywise is more than a corporate endeavour; it’s a crusade for safer workplaces, safeguarding lives, and shaping a secure industrial future.