Cluj / Düsseldorf, Germany, 17/11/2025 – RebelDot and GEA, one of the world’s largest systems suppliers for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical sectors, are forming a strategic joint venture to accelerate digital transformation in the global process industry. The joint venture – named “RebelDot Process Industries” will be headquartered in Cluj, Romania, and will launch in January 2026. The new company will focus on delivering specialized software development services – including web, mobile, and DevOps solutions – tailored to the needs of industrial customers.
Accelerating Digital Innovation for OEMs and Industrial Customers
The joint venture combines GEA’s deep process industry expertise with RebelDot’s excellence in software engineering to help process industry and mechanical engineering companies accelerate the development, scaling, and operation of their digital solutions. Customers will benefit from shorter product time-to-market, greater development efficiency, and cost-effective operations through modern DevOps practices. GEA has also assigned a dedicated software engineering team at RebelDot to collaboratively develop Artificial Intelligence solutions. This includes the GEA Copilot®, which acts as an assistant for customers’ maintenance teams to fulfill their service tasks.
Tom Oelsner, Chief Digital Officer of GEA: “The joint venture enables us to combine our leading industry expertise with software excellence. This underscores our ambition to lead the digital transformation of the process industry and deliver first-class value to our customers”.
RebelDot – A Fast-Growing Tech Innovator
RebelDot is one of Romania’s most dynamic technology companies, headquartered in Cluj-Napoca, a major European tech hub. The company achieved 40% growth in both revenue and headcount in 2024, now employing more than 300 professionals.
RebelDot enjoys a strong reputation among young tech talent and maintains close ties with the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. Through the acquisition of a specialist AI firm, RebelDot has also expanded its expertise in artificial intelligence, enabling the joint venture to support OEMs in exploring AI-driven applications and solutions.
Tudor Ciuleanu, CEO of RebelDot: “We are excited to join forces with GEA in shaping the future of digital process industry solutions. Our experience as a digital innovation partner, blending user-centered design with cutting-edge software engineering, combined with GEA’s global reach and industry expertise, creates powerful synergies to deliver sustainable, customer-focused solutions“.
Open-Source Strategy as Foundation
GEA operates a large industrial cloud platform in the process industry – the GEA Cloud®, which connects more than 10,000 pieces of process equipment worldwide. The collaboration with RebelDot enables faster development cycles, greater agility, and access to specialized expertise, building on GEA’s open-source software strategy. Earlier in 2025, GEA became a member of the Eclipse Foundation, an independent non-profit organization supporting open-source software collaboration and innovation. Both GEA and RebelDot Process Industries will develop open-source-ready code and actively contribute to the process industry software community.
One example is project “Sealman”, which provides an open-source IIoT connectivity stack to machine builders. It helps OEMs focus on developing digital customer solutions while standardizing and simplifying equipment connectivity to their own cloud systems. Building on this open and collaborative approach, the new joint venture becomes an ideal partner for OEMs and industrial companies looking to develop scalable, future-proof software for an open digital ecosystem in modern production environments.
