Member Article

Fast-growth startup chooses Denmark as new HQ home

Wikifactory - the first social platform for collaborative product development, is excited to announce Copenhagen as the new home of its headquarters. A high-growth tech start-up, Wikifactory is active in over 190 countries with more than 80,000 subscribers using its all-in-one workspace to develop and prototype real products collaboratively, all in one online process. A global innovation hub for the products of tomorrow, and a bold, online alternative to the world’s fragile supply chain model, Wikifactory will be building the Internet of Production from the heart of Denmark.

Denmark’s relative neutrality toward the US-China trade war and its history of incubating some of the world’s most admired design and technology enterprises gives the country a unique, competitive edge in the current climate. Hosting advanced and highly specialised manufacturing, and diverse networks including MADE, AM Hub, the robotics cluster in Odense, SoundHub in Struer, and knowledge centres such as Teknologisk Institut and several of the world’s top-ranking universities, makes Denmark a natural launchpad for an enterprise of Wikifactory’s scope.

Until recently, Wikifactory was headquartered in Hong Kong, with its team spread across Madrid, London, and Shenzhen. However local and global developments have made Hong Kong sub-optimal for its core business operations. Among the candidates for relocation were Singapore, San Francisco, London, and Amsterdam. But the founders were won over by Denmark’s high global rankings, progressive business landscape and its vast resources for high-performing digital ventures. We also felt welcomed by institutions such as Copenhagen Capacity, who provided information, benchmarks and valuable advice.

Nicolai Peitersen, Wikifactory’s Danish-born co-founder, executive chairman and author of The Ethical Economy (Columbia University Press, NY, 2013), comments: “After more than two decades living and working abroad in China, the UK and France, I’m very excited to be bringing the business back to my home country. Not only as a proud Dane, but because of the country’s pure merit recognised by my international co-founders. Back in 2019 when we were invited to host our Internet of Production event at the annual TechFestival in Copenhagen, we knew already then that Denmark was a strong fit with our business values.”

Jens Peter Bredholt, Co-founder & chairman of leading Danish R&D Engineering consultancy, Kapacitet A/S, comments: “I’m excited to welcome Wikifactory to Denmark and support such an ambitious scaleup. As manufacturing becomes increasingly digitized, the opportunity for a web-based service for faster product innovation and rapid prototyping enabled by Wikifactory will contribute to Denmark’s capacity and speed of innovation.”

Wikifactory’s global community of skilled engineers, product designers, hardware start-ups and makers is growing at a staggering rate of 15% month on month. Global subscription is set to reach over 300,000 by the end of the year, and already more than 4,000 finished products have been developed virtually from robotics and electric vehicles to drones and agri-tech. From sustainable energy appliances and lab equipment, to 3D printers themselves; and from smart furniture and biotech fashion materials to medical supplies, including vital PPE and ventilators. No industry is left untouched.

Adopted by the global Fablab network of 3,000 makerspaces borne out of MIT, and powering organisations such as Field Ready who are the engineering equivalent of Médecins Sans Frontieres, Wikifactory is innovating Big Industry and paving the way for a new industrial model.

Niels Christian Nielsen, Board Director of Wikifactory and Silicon Valley based Board Director in multiple companies, including the Endowment Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, comments: “Not only has Wikifactory had success in terms of growth, but it champions an ambitious business model for sustainable production and a circular economy. If the global product development workforce has an online infrastructure to innovate globally for local production exactly where it’s needed, this will power innovation exponentially; innovate how, how much, and where we produce, revolutionize how and what we consume, thereby helping to equalize the global playing-field.”

Mikal Hallstrup, Founder of Designit, one of the largest strategic design companies that is part of Wipro Group, and an investor in Wikifactory, comments: “Digitized product development is extremely relevant at a time when global competition, local production, sustainability, and new forms of manufacturing require a review of our global supply chain model. Developing new products is still an inefficient and fragmented process in many ways. Wikifactory brings together this entire workflow into one cohesive platform, where companies, suppliers and product developers can work together to create the winning products of the future. It is a vision with enormous potential - not least for a country like Denmark, and for the rest of the world.”

Wikifactory, which launched its Beta in May 2019, has recently closed its latest USD 3 million funding round, securing more than USD 4.5 million in seed funding to date from impact investors across Europe and the US. With the investment, the company will build a quality-assured manufacturing marketplace to connect three marketplaces into a single Market Network. With mirrored servers in China to open up access to its hardware capital Shenzhen, Wikifactory is set to expand its features after Series A, with a vision to remove barriers to participate in industry so that everyone, everywhere can make almost anything with just a laptop and an internet connection.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Company .