SKF, the world’s largest bearing manufacturer and an industry leader for over 100 years, has joined Combient Foundry as the eighth member of the Venture Client Alliance. SKF’s first business opportunities for startups will be launched in early 2023.
SKF‘s core business is in developing, designing and manufacturing bearings, seals and lubrication systems for mechanical appliances and industrial solutions. There are not many industries out there which don’t use products SKF makes. Vehicles, production and resource treatment facilities, and power plants, just to name a few examples, all rely on efficient rotation solutions to continue functioning to high standards.
On top of high-quality products, SKF provides services to their customers to make sure they are getting the best performance out of their solutions. These include machine health assessments, engineering services, and remanufacturing services. In essence, SKF customers have for years been able to work with their business units to develop the perfect, custom fit solutions to maximize performance for their own use cases.
By joining Foundry, SKF sets out to expand their innovation capabilities together with the other companies in the Alliance. Benefitting from the work Foundry has done for almost five years, SKF’s areas of expertise will help expand the Alliance’s reach into entirely new areas of industrial startups. After all, there are almost limitless opportunities for inventing new solutions to solve strategic business needs.
“We are increasingly looking for external partnerships to enable faster growth in areas historically not in our core. By initiating work together with Combient Foundry, we can create a fast and professional access to startups across the world. This to faster find and engage in solutions in areas that is not in our core but needed for our growth”, says Annika Ölme, CTO & Senior Vice President, Technology Development, at SKF.
“With SKF, our alliance gains a new entry into an important area of industry, where there is lots of potential for disruptive new solutions. Giving access to SKF’s +100 years of expertise to startups and mixing with the startups innovative solutions will certainly create new value in sustainability and efficiency, with the power of new ideas,” says Lauri Lehtovuori, CEO of Combient Foundry.
