Munich Delivery times of several months, even several years? This is currently not uncommon in the chip industry. Customers who depend on a single type of semiconductor from a manufacturer are hit particularly hard. They are exposed to the goodwill of their supplier for better or for worse.
With his software, Sebastian Schaal wants to ensure that electronics companies no longer do this in the future. The founder of Luminovo has set out to revolutionize the process between a product idea and the development of market-ready electronic hardware. An important part of this: Customers can calculate how high the risk is if they rely on a single component from a supplier – or what it costs to consider alternative components right away in the design.
The 29-year-old has been selling his software “Lumiquote” since spring. According to his own statements, the Munich-based company already has 25 electronics manufacturers under contract. Now the electrical engineer is making the first big leap: Schaal takes over the competitor Electronic Fellows from Wiesbaden.
“This opens up a whole new perspective for us,” says Schaal. The start-up has developed a program with which circuit board manufacturers can create digital offers in the shortest possible time. A task that so far has mainly been done by hand and is very time-consuming.
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The acquisition gives Luminovo a second ready-to-sell product, explains Schaal. In addition, functions in its core product and that of Electronic Fellows could be exchanged.
The shareholders finance the purchase with a loan
His shareholders granted Schaal a convertible loan of 1.5 million euros for the purchase. The entrepreneur pays partly in shares, partly in cash. The three founders of Electronic Fellows, Florian Herborn, Nils Minor and Samuel Leisering, will remain on board in the future and will now become shareholders of Luminovo, the company announced. The Wiesbaden location will be retained alongside the headquarters in Munich.
“The takeover enables us to merge two tech stacks into a uniform product suite in order to make quotation and ordering processes in electronics production immediately more efficient,” explains Electronic Fellows founder Florian Herborn.
During their master’s degree in California, Schaal and his co-founder Timon Ruban dealt intensively with artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning for the first time. Back in Germany, both founded Luminovo almost four years ago, initially as a kind of AI consultancy, before the idea matured with the electronics industry.
The world’s largest contract manufacturer in the chip industry, TSMC, warns of tight capacities throughout the coming year.
(Photo: Reuters)
Investors were quickly convinced: the first round of financing poured into the cash register € 2.6 million. Money that should last until next spring and that came mainly from the venture capitalists Cherry and La Famiglia. In the early summer of 2022, new equity should then flow, Schaal wants to collect at least ten million euros. Luminovo currently employs 36 people – from Helsinki to Nairobi. Because in the young company it doesn’t matter where the office chair is. Schaal only calls his people together for face-to-face meetings twice a year.
Currently, it is mainly medium-sized, German electronics manufacturers who use Bavaria’s software. Companies that are little known to the public, such as the Augsburg-based BMK Group, Kessler Systems in Königseggwald or Limtronik GmbH in Limburg.
In the long term, however, Schaal also wants to do business with large corporations. Practically all companies in which electronics make up a significant part of the added value would come into question, for example in mechanical engineering or medical technology.
Chips will remain in short supply in 2022 as well
In any case, the current supply bottlenecks for the chips should not pass anytime soon – and thus benefit Luminovo. The head of TSMC, the world’s largest contract manufacturer, is not exactly confident: “We assume that TSMC’s capacities will remain very tight in 2021 and throughout 2022,” said CC Wei last week.
“Lumiquote” is linked to the databases of electronics distributors so that customers are always informed how much individual components cost and whether and when they are available. “Our products support companies in forecasting problems, reacting faster and better, and thus coping well with crises,” says Schaal.
Despite all the advantages, the business is not a sure-fire success. “It’s a conservative industry,” says Schaal. Chip crisis or not.
More: Even Apple is suffering from delivery bottlenecks: customers in the chip industry have to rethink their approach