Nordic Alpha Partners invests in Additive Drives to shape the future of electrification
Nordic Alpha Partners, a specialist private equity investor in green industrial transformation, has acquired a significant minority stake in Additive Drives, investing a mid-double-digit million euro figure in the German manufacturer of high-performance 3D-printed electric motor technology.
Existing investor AM Ventures also committed new capital, having backed Additive Drives since its seed stage.
Delivering the highest available thrust-to-weight ratio through innovative manufacturing, Additive Drives offer best in class efficiency-per-dollar ratios, as well as inductive engines free from any rare-earth materials.
With Nordic Alpha Partners joining as an investor, Additive Drives can accelerate their mission to significantly reduce global energy consumption, enable new types of electrification and upgrade hundreds of sectors with the future of e-motors.
Already, the company is serving some of the largest blue-chip customers in the world, including Amazon, Airbus, Audi, Schaeffler, BMW
Revolutionary electric motors at the centre of the global energy transition
- Electric motors and the systems they drive account for around 53% of global electricity consumption.
- Additive Drives’ technology for industrial customers reaches up to 98% energy efficiency, lowering overall energy loss by 70%.
This performance exceeds the most advanced IE5 benchmark defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission. In fact, Additive Drives’ technology delivers performance that effectively reaches IE7 performance.
For industrial customers, this means tremendous gains in energy efficiency, lower total cost of ownership, and improved sustainability performance in high-demand applications.
Mitigating energy loss from these motors is one of the most direct ways to improve energy use and support the global re-industrialisation agenda.
At the same time, Additive Drive motors deliver the highest thrust-to-weight ratio, opening up for entirely new types of innovation and applications. The most important measure for electric vehicles, aerospace, aviation and advanced robotics in order to attain longer range, lower energy usage and improved systems reliability.
One of the most strategic assets for European energy resilience
The technology occupies a “sweet spot” for Europe’s electrification agenda: scalable and immediately applicable across booming but energy intensive industries such as AI (data centres), quantum computing, eMobility, and robotics.
Improved energy efficiency translates directly into less heat dissipation and thereby less need for large cooling infrastructure, solving a key issue for some of the most critical areas of technology development for Europe.
In the past, electrification has been exposed to third-party and supply chain dependencies in relation to access to rare earth and minerals for magnets and other components.
However Additive Drives is able to manufacture motors without rare-earths, reducing dependency on geopolitically sensitive supply chains and strengthening European industrial sovereignty.
Technology leadership and financial strength
Additive Drives’ production technology further enables rapid deployment. In fact, prototypes can be manufactured in just 21 days, cutting development cycles and down-time.
As a result, Additive Drives has seen strong profitability from day one and is already bankable with several European lenders.
The company was recently ranked #7 in a leading German financial performance ranking among more than 8000 founded companies.
Operational value creation over passive capital
“It is truly rare to see a founder team build something so pioneering and at the same time have such a strong financial performance less than five years after inception. It requires them to make great decisions consistently, and that’s what they’ve done”, said Nikolaj Magne Larsen, Partner at Nordic Alpha Partners.
“We wanted to work with Nordic Alpha Partners because they have a unique toolkit for industrial scaling and navigating industrial transformations”, said Philipp Arnold , Chief Financial Officer at Additive Drives. “We have been cash-positive from early on and we were looking for an operational partner that could really enable us to tap into hypergrowth and expand globally even faster”
“Additive Drives is a great example of the fact that Europe is still leading the game when it comes to highly advanced industrial technologies. They are already accelerating global electrification, and I’m sure we will see entirely new product categories emerge as a result”, said Laurits Bach Sørensen, Co-Founder and Senior Partner at Nordic Alpha Partners.
„Additive Drives is a prime example of the innovative power of the German Mittelstand,“ said Arno Held, Managing Partner at AM Ventures. „We are proud to have supported the team from day one, building a technology leader in e-mobility. By introducing our trusted co-investor Nordic Alpha Partners, we are helping accelerate the next growth phase on the path to create a European champion for a more sustainable future.
About Additive Drives
Additive Drives is a German manufacturer of next-generation electric motors, combining proprietary 3D and conventional manufacturing processes with extreme efficiency, lightweight design and magnet-free designs and components.
Founded in 2020 in Dresden, Germany, Additive Drives is led by founders Philipp Arnold, Axel Helm and Dr. Jakob Jung. Together with 70+ employees, the company currently serves numerous industrial, mobility and infrastructure clients for whom performance, reliability and energy efficiency are critical.
About AM Ventures
The leading venture capital firm in additive manufacturing, (AM) has an extensive current portfolio of 16 companies in 6 countries on 3 continents. The team possesses in-depth technology know-how and is well connected with the most experienced experts in the field. As an investment partner, the company provides a globally leading ecosystem of highly innovative investments in AM and introduces entrepreneurs to a large pool of industry veterans, each one with decades of experience in engineering, manufacturing and executive management.
About Nordic Alpha Partners
Founded in 2017, Nordic Alpha Partners is a new type of fund and one of Europe’s top greentech equity investment firms. Targeting European re-industrialisation and hypertransformation through advanced technologies, the firm has raised €400m across two funds for deployment across the Nordics and DACH regions.
The firm partners with entrepreneurs and innovators to scale solutions that address global challenges in energy, construction, industrial decarbonisation, and sustainability technology.
By combining a bespoke end-to-end value creation toolkit with in-house capabilities across ESG, Finance, Communications, M&A, Legal, Talent and Compliance, Nordic Alpha Partners is able to supports founders and technology companies up to a year before deploying capital, setting them up for systematic hypergrowth.