Smart Craft raises Pre-Series A extension from Omron Ventures
What's the deal? Smart CraftDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Tokyo-based startup offering a cloud-based Manufacturing Execution System (MES), has raised a Pre-Series A extension round from Omron VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The investment brings strategic backing from OmronDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → Corporation, a major industrial automation player, as Smart Craft works to digitise factory operations like process management, quality control, and inventory tracking.
The funds will go towards expanding product functionality, hiring across business and development teams, and deepening partnerships. Smart Craft also plans to integrate machine data linkage and AI capabilities into its SaaS platform.
Why now? Manufacturing still runs on paper records and spreadsheets in many facilities, even as the sector faces severe labour shortages, rising costs, and intensifying global competition. The gap between outdated shop-floor practices and the demand for real-time, data-driven operations is widening fast.
Smart Craft has seen a 470% increase in adoption between 2024 and 2026, spanning small to large enterprises. That growth signals a tipping point in manufacturer willingness to adopt digital tools — and a need for Smart Craft to scale its team and product to meet demand.
What could go wrong? Digitising manufacturing is notoriously difficult. Factories run diverse, legacy equipment, and convincing shop-floor workers to change long-standing habits is a slow process. As an early-stage company, Smart Craft still has to prove it can scale reliably while competing against established MES providers and larger industrial software vendors.
Strategic investors like Omron Ventures can open doors, but they can also narrow a startup's trajectory if the partnership favours one ecosystem over others.
The signal: Omron Ventures, operating as the investment fund arm of a global automation giant, is making a pointed bet that the IT-OT integration gap in manufacturing will be closed by specialist SaaS players rather than legacy industrial software suites. With Smart Craft still classified as early stage on Dealroom despite its 470% adoption growth, the company sits at an inflection point where strategic corporate backing could accelerate distribution far faster than a purely financial investor could.
Read more: third-news.com
