Nordic Alpha Partners, based in Hellerup, Denmark, has acquired a significant minority stake in Additive Drives GmbH, Dresden, Germany, investing a mid-double-digit million-euro figure in the manufacturer of high-performance additively manufactured electric motor technology. Existing investor AM Ventures also committed new capital, having backed Additive Drives since its seed stage.

Reportedly delivering the highest available thrust-to-weight ratio, Additive Drives uses its innovative manufacturing processes to improve efficiency-per-dollar ratios. Its inductive engines are also free from any rare-earth materials.

The company is already serving some of the largest blue-chip customers in the world, including Amazon, Airbus, Audi, Schaeffler, and BMW.

“It is truly rare to see a founder team build something so pioneering and at the same time have such a strong financial performance less than five years after inception,” stated Nikolaj Magne Larsen, Partner at Nordic Alpha Partners. “It requires them to make great decisions consistently, and that’s what they’ve done.”

With Nordic Alpha Partners joining as an investor, Additive Drives hopes to accelerate its mission to significantly reduce global energy consumption, enable new types of electrification and upgrade hundreds of sectors with the future of e-motors.

Philipp Arnold, Chief Financial Officer at Additive Drives, commented, “We wanted to work with Nordic Alpha Partners because they have a unique toolkit for industrial scaling and navigating industrial transformations. We have been cash-positive from early on and we were looking for an operational partner that could really enable us to tap into hypergrowth and expand globally even faster.”

Electric motors at the centre of the global energy transition

Electric motors and the systems they drive are reported to account for around 53% of global electricity consumption. Additive Drives’ technology reaches up to 98% energy efficiency, lowering overall energy loss by 70%, states the company.

This performance exceeds the most advanced IE5 benchmark defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission, effectively reaching IE7 performance.

For industrial customers, this means tremendous gains in energy efficiency, lower total cost of ownership, and improved sustainability performance in high-demand applications.

Mitigating energy loss from these motors is one of the most direct ways to improve energy use and support the global re-industrialisation agenda.

At the same time, Additive Drives’ motors deliver the highest thrust-to-weight ratio, opening up for entirely new types of innovation and applications, reportedly the most important measure for electric vehicles, aerospace, aviation and advanced robotics in order to attain longer range, lower energy usage and improved systems reliability.

Strategic assets for European energy resilience

The technology is said to occupy an optimal space for Europe’s electrification agenda: scalable and immediately applicable across booming but energy-intensive industries such as AI (data centres), quantum computing, eMobility, and robotics.

Improved energy efficiency translates directly into less heat dissipation and thereby less need for large cooling infrastructure, solving a key issue for some of the most critical areas of technology development for Europe.

“Additive Drives is a great example of the fact that Europe is still leading the game when it comes to highly advanced industrial technologies,” added Laurits Bach Sørensen, Co-Founder and Senior Partner at Nordic Alpha Partners. “They are already accelerating global electrification, and I’m sure we will see entirely new product categories emerge as a result.”

In the past, electrification has been exposed to third-party and supply chain dependencies in relation to access to rare earth and minerals for magnets and other components. However, Additive Drives is able to manufacture motors without rare-earths, reducing dependency on geopolitically sensitive supply chains and strengthening European industrial sovereignty.

Technology leadership and financial strength

Additive Drives’ production technology further enables rapid deployment, prototypes can be manufactured in just 21 days, cutting development cycles and down-time.

As a result, Additive Drives has seen strong profitability from day one and is already bankable with several European lenders.

The company was recently ranked seventh in a German financial performance ranking among more than 8000 founded companies.

Arno Held, Managing Partner at AM Ventures, stated, “Additive Drives is a prime example of the innovative power of the German Mittelstand. We are proud to have supported the team from day one, building a technology leader in e-mobility. By introducing our trusted co-investor Nordic Alpha Partners, we are helping accelerate the next growth phase on the path to create a European champion for a more sustainable future.”