AI-powered factory operations-focused solutions provider Guidewheel announced that it has raised $31 million in a Series B funding round led by BlackRock and Temasek’s decarbonization-focused fund, Decarbonization Partners.

Launched in 2018, and founded out of Stanford, California-based Guidewheel provides solutions aimed at helping factories to reach sustainable peak performance, enabling users to reduce lost production time, increase efficiency and enhance performance over time, in addition to tracking and managing energy and carbon emissions to meet sustainability goals. The company’s solution, “FactoryOps,” uses sensors clipped onto the power supply of factory floor machinery or equipment, which sends data for real-time analysis, providing key metrics and visuals to users’ devices, allowing users to make data-driven decisions and receive real-time alerts to identify and address machine-level issues and trends and improve efficiency. The company’s customers include General Motors, Kimberly Clark, U.S. Steel and Johnson & Johnson.

According to Guidewheel, the new capital will be used to help scale the FactoryOps platform. The company noted that it has releasing new features on top of the core platform, including Scout, a recently-released AI-powered predictive maintenance solution to detect early warning signs of issues before they cause downtime, quality defects, or catastrophic failure.

Lauren Dunford, Co-founder and CEO of Guidewheel, said:

“A new industrial revolution is taking place that will reshape not only manufacturing processes, but entire business models—and the importance of manufacturing has never been clearer. Equipment in factories often lasts for decades, and a significant number of machines are not yet even connected to the cloud. Historically, the only available solutions have been cost-prohibitive and require specialized skills. Guidewheel changes that by providing a fast, scalable solution that minimizes operational disruption to swiftly connect all machines—across all ages, makes, and models—at a fraction of the cost of competitive solutions.”

Decarbonization Partners was launched by BlackRock and Temasek in 2022, establishing a late-stage venture capital and growth private equity partnership to invest in companies providing technologies and solutions that help accelerate the transition to a net zero economy by 2050. The partnership announced earlier this year that it raised $1.4 billion at the final close of its inaugural fund, Decarbonization Partners Fund I, well ahead of its $1 billion fundraising target.

Dr. Meghan Sharp, Global Head and Chief Investment Officer of Decarbonization Partners, said:

“We’re excited to support Guidewheel not just because their technology solves an important problem for manufacturers, but because they’ve found a way to build sustainability into the core of manufacturing operations. By using Guidewheel to help manage their factory operations, customers can not only improve efficiency and reduce costs, but also reduce energy consumption and emissions.”

Additional investors in the round included Ecolab, Rethink Impact, and GSBackers as well as existing investors Greycroft and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.