Startup Spotlight

Startup Spotlight

The Boring Hardware Company That Could Quietly Become Infrastructure

Industrial control panels haven't changed in decades. This Brooklyn startup just raised $18M to fix that, and almost nobody is talking about it.

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Startup spotlight
Jun 17, 2026
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Company Overview

Podium Automation makes industrial control panels. Not software. Not AI agents. Actual physical boxes full of wires, switches, and circuit breakers that tell factory equipment when to start, stop, and how to communicate safely with everything around it.

If that sounds unglamorous, that’s the point.

The company just closed an $18 million Se…

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