Inside UMH: why industrial AI can’t scale without a shared data foundation

Manufacturing has spent decades investing in automation, software, and AI.
The tools are here. The ambition is there. And yet, progress keeps stalling where it matters most on the factory shop floor. The problem isn’t innovation. It’s data.

For Alexander Krüger, CEO and co-founder of United Manufacturing Hub (UMH), this reality was impossible to ignore. Before founding UMH, Alexander & Jeremy spent years digitising factories as a consultant. No matter the sector or geography, the pattern was consistent. Machines were generating signals, teams were motivated to improve operations — but data remained fragmented, locked in proprietary systems, or too fragile to scale.

Alexander explains that digital initiatives fail not because ideas are weak, but because the underlying infrastructure cannot support them. “If you want digital use cases to work, data needs to behave like a utility,” he says. “In manufacturing, it didn’t.”
That realisation became the foundation of United Manufacturing Hub (UMH).

The Interview: Inside UMH

Q: What “aha” moment made you realise this was the right problem to solve?

Rather than a single breakthrough, Alexander describes the “aha” moment as cumulative. Across factories, sectors, and geographies, the pattern was always the same: data existed, but it was never accessible in a way that allowed teams to build and scale digital use cases.
Digital initiatives failed not because of weak ideas, but because every new application relied on brittle, one-off integrations. “Every factory we worked with had data,” Alexander says. “But it was always just out of reach. You couldn’t build reliably on top of it.”
That repetition clarified the real problem. Applications and AI models were not the constraint - the lack of a shared data foundation was.
“That’s when it clicked,” he adds. “Data had to become infrastructure. So we built it.”
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Q: Can you share a recent example of real-world impact?

Alexander points to one automotive customer as a clear illustration of what changes when the data foundation is in place. Within a week, a single power user connected an entire production site to UMH - without a large rollout or long integration cycle. Use cases that had previously taken more than a year, and over €100,000, were replicated almost immediately.
The customer is now projecting 1–2% efficiency gains, driven purely by better access to data that already existed. “That’s what happens when the foundation finally works,” Alexander explains. “Once data is reusable, impact compounds very quickly.”
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Q: What is the boldest risk you have taken so far - and how did it pay off?

One of the most consequential decisions was choosing to build UMH as an open-source platform — a non-obvious path in an industry dominated by incumbents and vendor lock-in.
Alexander explains that the decision was rooted in how factories actually operate, and in who does the building on the shop floor. “Open source let us scale trust,” he says. “It aligns with how engineers and operators want to work, and it allows the community to shape the product faster than we ever could alone.”
Today, UMH is one of the most widely used open-source platforms in manufacturing, reinforcing Alexander’s belief that openness can outperform control.
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‍Q: What  lesson has surprised you most when working with traditional industries?

Early on, Alexander admits he underestimated how tech-minded factory teams already were. “We thought tech-first people in factories were rare,” he says. “They’re not.”

Across sites, he encountered operators and engineers eager to experiment, automate, and improve processes - if given the right tools. The constraint wasn’t mindset, but infrastructure. “Manufacturing isn’t missing talent,” Alexander explains. “It’s missing the tools that allow that talent to move quickly.”
That insight now shapes UMH’s product philosophy.

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‍Q: What are the long-term ripple effects if UMH succeeds?

For Alexander, the ambition behind UMH extends far beyond individual deployments.
Manufacturing underpins everyday life. Improving its efficiency and quality makes goods more accessible — and that is how societies progress.
“Right now, fragmented data is what’s holding industry back,” Alexander says. “Open source gives us the reach to fix that.”
The long-term goal is clear: to build the open data backbone for factories worldwide - where productivity, resilience, and decarbonisation can finally scale together.

About UMH

United Manufacturing Hub (UMH) was founded by Alexander Krüger, together with Jeremy Theocharis, to build the data foundation factories are missing. Ahead of the round, Niklas Hebborn joined UMH to further strengthen and extend the management team.
UMH is an open-source, real-time industrial data platform that connects machines, sensors, and IT systems into a unified, standardised data layer — replacing fragmented, brittle integrations with scalable infrastructure built for the shop floor. By cleaning, contextualising, and making industrial data usable in real time, UMH enables manufacturers to deploy operational, energy, quality, and AI use cases in weeks — improving productivity, resilience, and long-term competitiveness.
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Continue reading more about UMH and why we invested or visit their website at www.umh.app

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Note. article written by Pauline Jimenez, Head of Marketing at KOMPAS VC

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