Unikie Oy and Mystes Oy are merging into one company, thus forming the fastest-growing software development house in Finland at the moment. After the acquisition, Unikie employs more than 100 software experts, but it is aiming even further with the growth. The future of their own product development looks bright in the international markets. Unikie’s AI Vision application will revolutionize the world with an intelligent vision system for machines.
During its two and a half years of existence Unikie has invested heavily into their own product development, right from the beginning. The operating model for going international is to license technology solutions for the international customers, and to support the delivery with customer-specific tailoring.
Along with the merger Unikie’s total scale grows, improving the company’s operational capacity. At the same time the resources for demanding software development and own product development are increasing. This speeds up the international breakthrough with own products.
– Our goal is to achieve more sales from abroad than from Finland in two to three years, Unikie’s CEO Esko Mertsalmi summarizes the company’s future vision.
Positive result and self-financed growth throughout the company history
Unikie is a new-era software company. The company’s operations have been built around people to support the well-being of both the employees and the customers. The low organization structure and transparent mode of operation have boosted the company’s growth into a unit of more than 100 people.
– The whole industry has changed a lot in the past ten years. As things stand, the developers choose very freel
y what kind of projects they want to do and with whom. In Unikie we want to offer the best projects to the best talents. We exploit our strong industry experience and it shows in numbers, explains Mertsalmi.
Along with the merger, Unikie strengthens its position in the Finnish market. Joining the two Helsinki teams creates a new strong business unit which concentrates on application development and integration services. The clientele and business areas of Mystes and Unikie support each other, which expands the service package offering.
– By combining Unikie’s expertise in embedded and hardware-based solutions into the strong cloud and integration know-how in Mystes, we create an entity which can offer our customers total integration solutions from business integrations to advanced IoT solutions, says the Mystes CEO Erno Lahtinen
Lahtinen sees the merger important also for boosting the sales of products developed at Mystes. Aino.io, the modern IT-integration monitoring tool developed by Mystes is ready for international distribution, and the merger enables not only more efficient sales but also going into the international markets.
Aiming for international markets with their own technology product
The spearheads of Unikie’s product development are Unikie AI Vision LiDAR application and simulation environment of the LiDAR system.
Unikie AI Vision is a sophisticated and comprehensive solution for self-guided vehicles and equipment. AI Vision can perform continuous and centimeter-accurate 3D modelling of the environment in real time, by making use of various sensors, such as those of stereo cameras, ultrasonic radars, GPS, accelometers and laser radars. Additionally, AI Vision exploits pattern recognition which enables people and other environmental barriers to be recognized even in extreme conditions.
– Unikie AI Vision offers eyes for self-guided vehicles and devices. Machine learning based decision-making brings a whole new dimension to automatic control of vehicles or devices, which in practice changes, for example, the operating environment of a machine or a ship into a fully digital world. The application beats the current camera solutions hands down because it is more accurate, real time, based on machine learning, and works also in extreme conditions, tells Mertsalmi.
The competition for the pole position of the total system suppliers for autonomic vehicles is heated. There are around 40 credible companies world-wide pursuing the first spot with their solutions. Currently Unikie is concentrating on software solutions and sensor fusion of detection technology related to laser technology, aiming to be a global technology provider in this area.
Unikie has also developed a simulated test environment which enables the planning, development and testing of LiDAR systems. In automotive industry, validating products is a demanding process, and a LiDAR system fulfilling the ISO26262 requirements alone requires 10 000 hours of flawless test data before it can be taken into use. Audi is the first car manufacturer to bring a model utilizing LiDAR technology onto the market, Audi A8. With the sales volumes of the automotive industry, the technology will quickly become available for a wide range of applications.
– Quality assurance has been the biggest challenge in the projects implemented this far, because a commercial validation tool such as ours has not been available. We are now offering the simulated test environment created by Unikie for testing the LiDAR solutions of all manufacturers, outlines Mertsalmi.
All employees continue
The merger between Unikie and Mystes is implemented as a stock-for-stock merger. The joint venture will function as Unikie Oy. In connection with the arrangement all current employees will continue as old employees. The integration will not cause any personnel reductions, but rather the company’s growth forecasts are strengthened. The premises as well as contact and billing information remain unchanged for now. All customer contracts also continue unchanged.
Mystes Oy
Mystes, founded in 2010, is a Finnish information technology company which develops business systems and applications, and their integrations. Mystes employs 29 people. The services continue in Itämerenkatu, Helsinki, as before.
Unikie Oy
Unikie is a software development house which develops demanding software solutions, for example, for automotive industry, telecommunications and engineering industry. Unikie was founded in 2015 and it employs more than 70 people.
Unikie’s forecasted consolidated turnover for the calendar year 2017 is approximately € 9M. During the first two years of its operations, the company’s business has been growing strongly and the growth is expected to continue.
