Geopolitical pressure accelerates the demand in many countries and regions to remodel – that is, rebuilding critical industry infrastructure and restore firms that have carried out or commissioned some or all their industrial operations to cheaper countries.
But it’s easier to say than to do. For example, in the key area of precision production, most countries in the West are not configured to fulfill the current production requirements for which entrepreneurs are facing.
This is a challenge Ismbard It goals to deal with. The British startup said that he is planning to create a network of factories in several western locations. CEO Alexander Fitzgerald told Techcrunch that the first of them began to operate in London in January, and claims that he can already answer requests for very precise parts. This has not yet revealed further locations.
The goal here is to aim at firms that won’t sink billions of Capex to their very own factories, but would normally conclude a contract with the producer to supply on their behalf.
“Let’s say you create an unrestricted air system, like a drone,” said Fitzgerald. “You will send us a project for some key parts in a 3D file. We will give you a quote for how quickly we can do it, and price. And then we feed this part from any material, and send it to you. And sometimes maybe we will do the actual last installation.” Isembard will strive for scale economy in its own operations, with one reserved layer of software, Freemasonry, connecting and supplying its objects.
This is no different from sending the same request to the factory in Asia, but it is in line with the growing demand for more local, resistant and more ecological supply chains.
Fitzgerald believes that British older suppliers will have difficulty keeping pace with a larger swing: supply chains are fragmented, qualified operators have retired or moved to different roles, and the factories are outdated – all results brought and further through the chains of supply to China and other countries in recent years. Using software and automation, Isembard believes that this will offer a real alternative to the current state of affairs, while presenting options that are faster and cheaper.
This pitch helped startup to secure a round of seven million kilos (about $ 9 million) under the leadership of the Capital concept, with the participation of 201 ventures, basic capital, forward fund, material projects, ventures Ventures Ventures and NP-Hard, in addition to angels, including Angels, including the EU Inc, Andreass Klinger and founder Joshua Western.
The Isembard strategy on the market initially focuses on aviation, defense and energy. Fitzgerald refused to say customers, but said that the company saw that almost all of its initial grip got here from defense and rapidly developing startups. He claimed that he and his team were also talking to the first and government bodies.
With only 12 employees, Isembard is still small. This is partly because so far it was financed with the income from Fitzgerald’s first exit-he saved his previous company in 2022. But this is also because he deliberately selected a less capital route than a startup of automation based in the USA, which collected about $ 216.5 million in 2024 to modernize the production of parts.
“We think it takes too long, too much capex and too much talent concentration in one place to build these large, 100,000 square feet,” he said. “What we actually do is a distributed factory model in which we have many smaller units, but all with the same technology and automation of the operating model.”
This is a reference to the functionality of Masonos, this reserved system, which supplies Isambard plants, which is able to perform “everything, from citing and estimating work by the client, to managing its own supply chain, automation of the schedule and priorities, but also the basic production and the way you cod the machines themselves,” said Fitzgerald. “At the moment, the problem is that everything is based on paper or entire software built in the 70s,” he said.
Despite this contemporary layer of software, Isembard is largely an engineering company. With a slight spelling amendment resulting from the use of the original, its name is a nod to a British industrialist and engineer Isambard Kingdom BrunelKnown for his work during the industrial revolution. But he also takes a website from his father, as the startup said in his own manifesto.
“When the father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel saw British soldiers returning from the war from the peninsula with wounded feet due to shoddy footwear suppliers”, history says – “He founded a footwear factory.”
This reference is to reflect Isembard’s spirit and ambitions, but it is no accident that it is about soldiers. None of the Fitzgerald’s families was in the army, but “he always had a sense of patriotism” and he was a reservist since 2016. This inspired Isembard, but the company’s ambitions go beyond Great Britain and Europe, potentially to North America, Australia and New Zealand. “We want to help solve industrialization in the West,” he said.