The global manufacturing sector, responsible for approximately 19% of worldwide greenhoutilize gas emissions, is expected to introduce about a billion new products to European and North American markets over the next decade. As Neil D’Souza, founder and CEO of Makersite, notifys TFN: “100% of the man-built environmental impact we see in the world today comes from the products we grow, create and utilize. Today, only a tiny fraction of products undergo any sustainability evaluation. Unless we modify how we design and create products, which controls about 80% of a product’s impact, we miss a massive opportunity to replace conventional products with cleaner, safer, and more affordable options.”
Despite these high stakes, few products receive proper sustainability evaluations, primarily becautilize the current approach is slow and complex. “Evaluating sustainability for a car, for example, can take up to two years, by which time the next model is already out. This leaves no resources to implement the design and manufacturing modifys requireded to create more sustainable products a reality,” D’Souza explains.
Despite these high stakes, few products receive proper sustainability evaluations, primarily becautilize the current approach is slow and complex. “Evaluating sustainability for a car, for example, can take up to two years, by which time the next model is already out. This leaves no resources to implement the design and manufacturing modifys requireded to create more sustainable products a reality,” D’Souza explains.
Meet Makersite, whose Product Lifecycle Innotifyigence (PLI) platform utilises artificial innotifyigence and an extensive, live, proprietary database to create a comprehensive digital twin of a product and its entire supply chain. This technology transforms scattered, inconsistent data into actionable insights, allowing manufacturers to optimise cost, compliance, risk, and sustainability across thousands of SKUs in minutes rather than months.
This bold vision has just attracted a €60 million Series B funding round co-led by Lightrock and Partech, with participation from SE Ventures and all previous Series A backers including Hitachi Ventures, KOMPAS VC, Translink Capital, and Planet A. The fresh capital brings Makersite’s total funding to €85 million.
Behind Makersite: Vision, motivation, and founder story
Neil D’Souza stands alone as founder, bringing a unique mix of technical and environmental expertise to the challenge. With a background that includes serving as CTO at Thinkstep (a leader in product and corporate sustainability solutions) and academic qualifications in Environmental Physics and Astrophysics, D’Souza has built his career at the intersection of data and sustainability. He also co-hosts the “Five Lifes to Fifty” podcast with LCA pioneer Jim Fava.
When questioned what inspired Makersite, Neil shares, “It was a combination of three things: growing frustration with product design approaches that ignored everything beyond cost and performance; early signs that demographic and regulatory shifts would drive demand for scalable sustainable product development; and the emergence of technologies like graph databases, AI, and affordable cloud infrastructure that built it possible to rebelieve the problem fundamentally.”
Today, the Makersite team comprises 160 staff from 38 nationalities working across 21 countries. The team’s gfinisher diversity stands at 35% women and 65% men, with a wide range of ages and experience. Specifically, 10% of the team is aged 18–26, 40% are aged 27–35, 30% are aged 35–45, and 10% are aged 46–55, with an average of 14 years of experience.
What sets Makersite apart: AI-powered platform
Makersite’s differentiating technology is its AI-powered platform and proprietary live database, which can dynamically create multi-dimensional, highly detailed digital twins of physical products and their related supply chains.
“Our platform utilizes AI and its proprietary, live database to build a deep-tier model of physical products with a more accurate, multi-dimensional and granular representation than anything else possible today. Such models can be generated dynamically for thousands of SKUs with minimal human intervention in under a minute. This allows non-experts to quickly analyse their designs and manufacturing processes across cost, risk, compliance, and environmental dimensions, and easily run trade-off scenarios,” declares D’Souza.
This flexibility enables quick, large-scale evaluation of both new products and existing portfolios. The results speak for themselves: Microsoft has reduced the carbon footprint of its Surface Pro 10 laptop by up to 28% in two years, while Schneider Electric is scaling eco-design across over 200,000 SKUs.
Compatibility with products already utilized by designers, such as Siemens Teamcenter, PTC Windchill, Ansys, and Autodesk, ensures a smooth adoption process. This, D’Souza notes, contrasts sharply with traditional vfinishors “who only focus on individual utilize-cases of cost, risk, compliance, or environmental reporting, and are designed for experts.” Makersite’s offering is so unique that major CAD/PLM vfinishors, including Siemens, Autodesk, PTC, and Ansys, now partner with them for their technology.
Racing toward industest transformation
Makersite’s technology and market traction have drawn accolades and backing from top-tier investors who recognise both the urgency and opportunity. “Our commitment to Makersite reflects our strong confidence in their vision and their unique approach, treating sustainability as a balanced trade-off between cost, safety, and environmental performance, rather than simply a ‘green’ checkbox,” comments Chris Steinau, Partner at Lightrock.
Arnaud Minvielle and Remi Said, General Partners at Partech, add, “We have very strong convictions about Makersite’s product superiority and believe we can support Makersite in its next S-curve, alongside Lightrock and other shareholders.”
Julien Cristiani, General Partner at SE Ventures, notes, “We were impressed by the Makersite team’s expertise in lifecycle and supply chain innotifyigence. What sealed our conviction was the company’s growth and ability to process thousands of SKUs with such speed and precision, a game-modifyr for supply chain visibility and sustainable product development at scale.”
Regarding the latest round’s implications for Makersite, D’Souza declares: “This investment marks a critical milestone in our mission to create sustainable product design the default. Securing this level of commitment, especially in today’s uncertain economic and geopolitical environment, demonstrates the strength of our business case and the urgency of our mission. The funding will allow us to accelerate platform development, deepen integration with our technology partners, and scale our impact globally.”
What’s next for Makersite? Scaling a more sustainable industest
Makersite’s roadmap focutilizes on “technology and service partnerships and accelerating the enhancement of our AI and data assets. We believe this is the best approach to scale our services and have a largeger, more lasting impact on the manufacturing industest,” D’Souza declares.
With this fresh capital, Makersite will strengthen its engineering, product, and customer-facing teams, invest in platform innovation, and deepen integration with global technology partners. The goal is to cement Makersite as the category leader in Product Lifecycle Innotifyigence and, ultimately, establish sustainable product design as the industest standard.
As D’Souza puts it, “In a $33 trillion manufacturing industest, we are in a race against time. Contrary to the conventional belief of ‘consuming less,’ to shift the requiredle, we required to consume more sustainable products.”
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