Fact Base raises ¥4.5 billion Series D for Zumen drawing tool
Japanese startup Fact Base has closed a ¥4.5 billion Series D to expand hiring and sales abroad for Zumen, its AI-based cloud system for managing manufacturing drawings.
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giftdetect· the right gift in minutesFact Base, the Japanese startup behind the drawing-management platform Zumen, announced on November 5 that it has raised a total of ¥4.5 billion in a Series D round. The money comes from a third-party share allotment and a transfer of existing shares, and it lifts the company's cumulative funding to ¥11.25 billion.
Insight Partners, which also led the Series C, led the round again. Artemis Ventures and MPower Partners joined as new investors. Fact Base says it will use the capital to strengthen hiring and sales overseas and to develop Zumen's technology and features. Funds will also go to new business development, back-office reinforcement and governance.
What Zumen does
According to the company, paper drawings and related documents still sit at the center of many manufacturing sites, which makes management cumbersome and keeps accumulated data from being put to use. Zumen links drawings with quotes, process instructions, videos and CAD data and manages them in one cloud service. It is being adopted mainly by small manufacturers, including町工場-style workshops.
AI reads the text on drawings and registers it, and can also find similar drawings. Users can search by text in drawings, documents and photos, and view the status of ongoing jobs on a whiteboard-style overview. The service handles quotes, delivery notes, invoices and payment tracking, with AI filling in drawing number, product name and material automatically. Security features include per-document access limits, operation logs, IP restrictions, SSO and multi-factor authentication, and the company holds ISMS certification.
Pricing is quoted per company, and Fact Base imports past drawings on behalf of new customers. The service supports multiple languages, and staff provide on-site support after rollout abroad.
Growth and a customer example
Revenue grew 2.3 times year on year and the number of Zumen customers rose 2.2 times. The service is now available in 14 countries including Japan. Wako Machining, a mold and parts maker in Handa, Aichi Prefecture, with two employees and one part-timer, says that AI now extracts product names from drawings received by email, cutting the time to prepare a quote from 15 minutes to about 3.
Apps worth a look
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