Purecontrol, the specialist in AI for industry, raises €7 million to accelerate its development in France and internationally

Purecontrol, the AI specialist for industry, raises €7M to accelerate its development in France and internationally

The Breton SME Purecontrol, created in 2017, announces a second round of funding of €7 million. Its mission is to help manufacturers greatly reduce their energy consumption, their carbon footprint and to optimize the operational efficiency of their processes, with intelligent control solutions for automatons.

This fundraiser is carried out with two manufacturers, Group OkWind and veolia, and two investment funds, Noshaq and Unexo. It will allow Purecontrol to accelerate its development on the water market in France and Europe and to support manufacturers in other sectors in their goals of energy saving and decarbonization.

Founded in 2017 by Geoffroy Maillard and Gautier Avril, Purecontrol develops solutions based on artificial intelligence making it possible to analyze and above all to control, in real time, industrial equipment and processes according to multiple objectives defined with the customer.

These solutions are now deployed on more than 300 sites in France, mainly in the field of water management, which now represents 80% of Purecontrol's activity. The successes observed on these sites managed by Purecontrol have made it possible to prove the effectiveness of these solutions with a 15% reduction in energy consumption on average, and up to 40% in the carbon footprint.

The Breton company will accelerate its development with ambitious goals of deployment among players in the water market and industry on 1500 sites by the end of 2023.

A strategic fundraiser to meet growth objectives

After a first fundraising of 1.7 million euros in 2021, Purecontrol has just completed a second fundraising of 7 million euros to develop and strengthen its commitment to the ecological transition of the industry.

The players in this round of funding are two manufacturers, the OkWind Group and Veolia, and two investment funds, Noshaq and Unexo. The historical investor, OkWind Group, confirms its commitment by maintaining its participation. The two co-founders, Geoffroy Maillard and Gautier Avril, remain majority shareholders of the company.

The objective of this fundraiser is to accelerate the development of Purecontrol on the water market in France and Europe in order to become the leader by industrializing artificial intelligence solutions. And new application cases will be developed in other industrial sectors to reinforce the positive impact on the consumption of energy, greenhouse gases and the preservation of the natural environment.

“We are delighted with this new chapter that is beginning for our company with this second round of funding. We will continue to grow and innovate while remaining majority shareholders with Gautier Avril, a necessary condition for our independence and agility. Our priority is to continue offering cutting-edge products and services to our customers, while strengthening our market position to become a significant European industrial leader.” announces Geoffroy Maillard, co-founder & CEO of Purecontrol.

“Since 2021, OkWind Group has been collaborating with Purecontrol in order to support players in the water-sanitation sector in their energy transition and the decarbonization of their activity, to optimize their energy consumption and make them more and more autonomous. We are delighted to strengthen our investment in Purecontrol, an innovative company with which we share the same values in favor of the decarbonization of the economy, in order to develop new synergies” announces Louis Maurice, President of the OKWind Group.

‍

Pierre Ribaute, CEO of Veolia's Water business in France, tells us that “Veolia is delighted with this new industrial partnership, which reinforces the relationships begun several years ago with Purecontrol. Together, we will deploy innovative solutions targeting the most relevant use cases to accelerate ecological transformation. This is now possible by combining our very strong expertise in environmental professions, with new artificial intelligence technologies developed by Purecontrol, for the benefit of our customers.”

“UNEXO is delighted to support Purecontrol's commercial acceleration. This investment is part of the Crédit Agricole Group's strategy to support energy transitions and sobriety models. We are convinced of the strong potential for the dissemination, beyond the use cases already addressed, of know-how in intelligent control of automatons.” adds Jérémy Durand, Head of Venture Capital at UNEXO.

‍

Building the future of industry

Purecontrol is maintaining the course begun 6 years ago: revolutionizing industrial automation with artificial intelligence by providing a layer of hypervision, prediction and real-time management to act in favor of the environment. Research is now going beyond the field of water management to tackle other industrial sectors, starting at the end of 2023.

” Our use cases already developed in the industrial sector will be marketed to replicate the successes we are experiencing in the field of water management. The participation of two industrial investors offers us unwavering support to double our growth prospects in this sector. This will reinforce our positioning in the eyes of our business partners, prospects and future investors.” indicates Geoffroy Maillard.

”This fundraising makes it possible to accelerate the positive impacts associated with the deployment of our solution.. In a context of climate emergency, we must move quickly. And that is what our solution allows: to effectively reduce energy consumption, and more generally, to reduce our environmental impact. Our solution makes it possible to reach, very quickly, objectives that have hitherto been extremely complex to achieve. We are committed to doing our part, and this is deeply in line with the values of Purecontrol. In this context, we want more than ever to pursue, accelerate and diversify projects with our customers and partners, in order to build the future of the industry together.” concludes Gautier Avril, Co-founder & CTO of Purecontrol.

A geographical expansion

To support this development and this rise in scale, more than 25 recruitments are planned in 2023, i.e. a workforce of 80 employees at the end of the year.

Commercial offices will be opened in Montpellier, Paris and Liège, in Belgium, where the company also intends to recruit technical profiles specialized in artificial intelligence. The first doors are already opening up to Europe with recruitments in progress in Spain and Great Britain to accelerate international growth.

Stéphanie Sacré, Investment Manager declares: “At Noshaq, our ambition is to invest in technologies that will be part of the solutions for the energy and environmental transition. Thanks to its unique solution and its experience in the water sector, we are convinced that Purecontrol is ideally positioned to meet the environmental and economic challenges faced by manufacturers in various sectors. We are very excited to welcome Purecontrol to the Liège region and to support them in this new chapter in their history.”

‍

Purecontrol press contacts:
Armelle Léna: 07 82 40 40 65 — armelle@lenacommunication.fr
Enora Delanoë: 07 83 37 68 09 — enora.delanoe@purecontrol.com