Following two months of collaboration, tutorials and hard work refining their visions and pitches, the first Sixth Sense cohort of seven start-ups pitched to an audience of entrepreneurs, investors and tech leaders at Demo Day.

Although each and every start-up did a fantastic job and impressed the judges, RIIICO and SmartParts were announced as co-winners, with Praemo announced as a runner up. Here’s a little bit more about our winning start-ups which will continue to work with Hexagon to scale their products.

RIIICO

A software and AI company aiming to transform the manufacturing industry by delivering cutting edge, interactive digital twins of factories. With automation progressing in factories across the world, RIIICO creates an accurate 3D model of everything happening in a factory environment, enabling people to see what’s happening and what could be improved or altered to boost productivity and sustainability.
Founders Jan Büchsenschütz, Patrick Mertens and Felix Fink met at university and founded RIIICO in 2021, on a mission to create software that is not just powerful but fun and easy to work with.

The company has enjoyed the Sixth Sense experience so far: “The support from Hexagon has been incredible, from senior management right through to the resources we’ve had access to,” explains Jan. “Everyone has been very available, telling us their vision, hearing ours and how we offer a good solution to it. Through everybody’s efforts we were able to show impressive results in such a short time.”

Jan sees significant value in the relationship with Hexagon: “Hexagon has a great positioning in the manufacturing industry. As a startup, you’re all about these valuable stakeholders who are experienced in the industry, know the problems, and tackle them every day. I think Hexagon is a good match for that.

“It’s amazing to win. We see the opportunity, Hexagon sees it as well and now we’re looking forward to continuing our work. In the last few months our team has built the foundation of what will become the RIIICO unicorn! Winning Sixth Sense now opens up new opportunities for us to further leverage the value of our service and expand our use cases on a global scale to Hexagon’s customers.”

SmartParts

SmartParts was born out of parent company PrintParts – an additive manufacturing service and technology development company. Founder Robert Haleluk realised that traceability was a big issue in additive manufacturing and so developed SmartParts to manage, authenticate, and track additive materials and parts throughout their lifecycle.

The start-up uses programmable particles embedded within additive materials or added to parts in post-processing. Its integrated solution combines materials, hardware and software to connect manufacturing data to additive materials and parts.

The SmartParts has learned a lot throughout the Sixth Sense experience so far, explains COO Cody Burke: “It’s been great! We’ve had a lot of really good coaches that we’ve worked with, they’ve helped us explore some really interesting applications. It’s been really educational to work with a company that has the customer reach that Hexagon has.”

The power of collaboration has been proven to the start-up: “The biggest takeaway is that Sixth Sense has reinforced our desire and our philosophy to become a part of an ecosystem,” says Cody. “We can add one element to some of the solutions that Hexagon offers. So we’ve really learned the value of collaborating with other entities to create more value for the customer.”

Winning means a lot: “Winning is validation that our message is getting across and we’re on the right track with the solution we’ve created. We intend to continue the relationship with Hexagon and hopefully that’ll allow us to scale, get in front of new customers and just grow the business. Honestly, I’m just excited to get back to work!”

Runner-up: Praemo

Shifting from traditional operating and business models to one that exploits the IIoT and advanced tools like AI is critical to remain competitive in a data driven world. Founded in 2017, Praemo delivers Razor™ — an analytics engine combining industry expertise with AI and the IIoT to predict and prevent disruption to operations.

The Praemo Razor™ engine ingests data as-is from manufacturing systems to deliver insights. Machine learning algorithms, adapted for industrial environments, analyse collected data and identify abnormal equipment and process behaviour – sending alerts before it leads to costly variability and disruptions.

Founded in 2017, Praemo offers a new approach that makes industrial machine learning a competitive advantage for industrial operations. The Praemo Razor™ engine ingests data as-is from manufacturing systems to deliver insights to drive next level continuous improvement.

President and COO of Praemo, Paul Boris, says the interactions with Hexagon through Sixth Sense have been hugely valuable: “The programme has helped us hone our message and it has created a level of introduction to the Hexagon team that we never had before. It’s very difficult, typically, to find the right people in a large organisation – Sixth Sense has helped streamline the entire process for us.”

The practical applications sought for the start-ups by the Sixth Sense team: “Hexagon delivers very complex solutions within end-to-end in manufacturing. This programme is not just about identifying new technologies, but there’s a real drive to figure out how to apply this into manufacturing more effectively.”