Webinar: Dark Factories - Lights out, full speed manufacturing

The offshoring model of Western manufacturing has an expiry date. Demographics, wages, and geopolitics are all moving against it at once, and the assumption that labor is a cheap, abundant input is no longer true. What replaces it looks fundamentally different: factories that run lights-out, are designed around machines rather than people, and sit close to demand instead of halfway around the world. We believe this is a generational opportunity to rebuild the industrial base, and it will take everyone in the ecosystem pulling in the same direction to capture it. As part of this, on May 20 at 11:00 AM CEST, we have teamed up with Siemens and Daimler Truck to explore the world of Dark Factories.

Below is a brief teaser on why we think the question of how factories are built and operated is one of the most consequential shifts in industry.

For decades, manufacturing has optimized around a single variable. In factories designed around humans, production is moved to where labor is abundant and cheap.But times have changed. Demographics are working against it as the workforce shrinks. The wage arbitrage gap that justified the offshoring overhead is closing. And supply chain dependency has become a sovereignty risk. If labor becomes scarce and expensive, capital becomes the dominating lever in the production function. The modern technology stack enables us to fundamentally rethink how factories are built and operated: lights-out and autonomous. Will this actually become the next industrial paradigm or just another cycle of overpromised automation?

Let’s discuss what this transition actually looks like on the ground with industry leaders and founders in the space:

We will explore: - Where is the pain point actually acute today? - Which technologies already exist, and which ones are still missing? - Brownfield or greenfield, alone or with partners? - What have past automation waves gotten wrong? - What does it actually take to build and scale a dark factory?

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 11:00 AM CEST Thank you all for joining! Best, The Visionaries Tomorrow team