Monumo welcomes Patrick Pordage as new-era engineering mission raises £6.5m

Patrick Pordage has joined Monumo as chief marketing officer.

The former head of marketing at CMR Surgical for six years, Patrick has stepped into his new role at the new-generation engineering company after a summer break.

He arrives as Monumo, which has facilities at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in the Entopia Building on Regent Street, and also in Coventry, is closing a £6.5m seed funding round. The round is expected to kickstart its electromagnetic engineering agenda, two years after being founded by Dominic Vergine, a former head of sustainability VP at Arm.

“Monumo wants to optimise the performance of the electric motor,” says Patrick. From fans to computers to fridges to the car, there’s motors doing things all the time and fundamentally they haven’t changed much since they were first introduced. The vast number of rare earth permanent magnets comes from either Russia or China, with obvious problems.

“But the magnet is just one aspect of the engineering involved. We believe we can improve the systems involved in electric motors and the parts they move. We think they haven’t been optimised and they could be optimised by deeptech – or machine learning if you prefer – and AI, so we let computers do what they’re good at doing, which is crunching numbers.”

Using deeptech to improve electric motors – including EVs – is Monumo’s raison d’être, adds Patrick.

“Electric motors are chewing through half the world’s electricity which is what motivates me now,” he says. “Anything we can do to make them significantly better – I realise this term means different things to different people – can only be a good thing for the environment, society and also for business.”

Monumo’s chair is Martin Frost, CMR Surgical’s co-founder and former CEO, while Steve Randle, a former director of CMR, is a non-executive director. Is there some sort of CMR/Monumo link, perhaps?

“There is no CMR – or Arm – link per se,” says Patrick. “As often is true in Cambridge, people know people who know people…”

One of the first public-facing duties for the new CTO is helping to present Monumo’s case at Cleantech Venture Day, which is organised by Cambridge Cleantech and takes place in London this week (October 10 and 11).

“We’re looking forward to participating at Cleantech Venture Day,” notes Patrick.

Dominic Vergine said: “We are delighted to welcome Patrick to the Monumo team.

“His contribution will be invaluable as we clarify and strengthen our technology and brand ready for big things in 2024.”