Dewesoft
Slovenian tech with 100 year vision
World's best Data acquisition systems (DAQ). Versatile and easy-to-use data acquisition systems - the ultimate tools for test and measurement applications. Our vision is to design test equipment that simplifies the advancement of humanity.
Most technology companies dream of becoming a unicorn, raising billions from investors and engineering a lucrative exit. Dewesoft is pursuing almost the opposite. Based in a former Slovenian mining town, it has no external shareholders, finances its growth from its own profits and intends to remain independent for at least another century. It reinvests around 85% of its profits and allows only active employees to own its shares. Yet its measurement technologies are used by some of the world’s most advanced organisations, from NASA and SpaceX to Siemens and Volkswagen. Dewesoft is a global technology leader behaving more like a patient, self-renewing community than a conventional corporation.
The company began in 2000 in Trbovlje, a small town in central Slovenia shaped by two centuries of coal mining. As the mines and associated industries declined, the region faced the familiar consequences of deindustrialisation: lost employment, declining confidence and an exodus of ambitious young people. It was an unlikely place from which to build a globally competitive technology business.
Founders Jure Knez and Andrej Orožen were engineers who understood the frustrations of collecting and interpreting complex test data. Dewesoft initially developed software for data-acquisition instruments manufactured by other companies. Its software made it easier for engineers to capture, visualise and analyse information generated during product testing.
The founders gradually recognised, however, that software alone would limit what they could achieve. By designing the physical instruments as well as the software, Dewesoft could create an integrated system that was more capable and much easier to use. The company therefore moved into hardware, bringing product design, electronics, software development, testing and manufacturing together.
This integration became one of Dewesoft’s greatest competitive advantages. While many industrial technology companies assemble components and applications produced by multiple suppliers, Dewesoft controls most of its critical system. Its equipment can synchronise information from sound, vibration, strain, temperature, electricity, video, vehicle networks and numerous other sources. Engineers can observe complicated physical systems through one coherent interface.
Its products are now used across automotive development, aerospace, energy, transport, civil engineering, manufacturing and scientific research. Engineers use Dewesoft to test cars, aircraft and spacecraft; monitor turbines, bridges and industrial machinery; analyse noise and vibration; and measure electrical power. This is largely invisible technology, but it supports some of the world’s most ambitious engineering projects. When a rocket is tested, a new electric vehicle is validated or an energy system is monitored, reliable measurement determines what engineers can understand—and therefore what they can improve.
From its beginnings in Trbovlje, Dewesoft has grown into an international business with operations across Europe, the Americas and Asia. Revenue reached approximately €100 million in 2023, when it employed around 400 people worldwide, about half of them in Slovenia. Its continued expansion demonstrates that sophisticated industrial technology does not need to emerge from Silicon Valley, Shenzhen or another established innovation centre.
However, Dewesoft’s most radical innovation may not be its technology. It is the way the company is owned, financed and governed.
Led by co-founder and president Jure Knez, Dewesoft is self-financed and 100% employee-owned. It has resisted external investors and the expectation that successful founders should eventually sell. Shares can be owned only by active employees. When people leave the company, they return their shares, allowing ownership to pass to the next generation of employees rather than external investors or inheritors.
This arrangement aligns ownership with contribution. The people developing products, serving customers and building the organisation are also its shareholders. They participate in the value they help create, while accepting responsibility for the company’s long-term health. Ownership is not simply a financial reward; it supports a culture of stewardship.
Dewesoft’s capital model is equally unusual. Rather than maximising distributions to shareholders, it reinvests around 85% of its profits in research, product development, manufacturing capacity, infrastructure and talent. Retained earnings finance future growth, reducing dependency on lenders or investors whose priorities might conflict with its purpose.
This patient approach allows Dewesoft to develop demanding technologies, maintain unusually close relationships with engineers and pursue opportunities that may take years to mature. It can make decisions based on technical merit and long-term customer value rather than the immediate requirements of a quarterly market cycle.
The company describes its ambition through a 100-year plan. This does not mean predicting precisely which products Dewesoft will make in 2126. It means designing the organisation so it can continue renewing itself across generations. Independence, employee ownership, knowledge development and financial resilience become strategic capabilities rather than sentimental ideals.
The 100-year perspective changes the questions leaders ask. Instead of “How quickly can we sell the company?”, the question becomes “What will enable it to endure?” Instead of extracting the greatest short-term return, Dewesoft invests in future capabilities. Rather than concentrating knowledge and authority in its founders, it must continually develop new owners and leaders capable of carrying the institution forward.
Its long-term purpose also reaches beyond the company. Dewesoft has become an anchor for the regeneration of Trbovlje and the surrounding Zasavje region. Through Katapult, a business accelerator established by Knez, it gives entrepreneurs access to laboratories, engineering knowledge, production equipment, mentoring, finance and international distribution.
Katapult addresses a common failure in innovation systems. Inventors may have strong ideas but lack the capability to industrialise them. A prototype is not yet a reliable product; a product is not yet a scalable company; and a local company does not automatically have access to global markets. Dewesoft helps bridge these gaps by sharing the infrastructure and expertise it has built.
This creates a multiplier effect. Dewesoft does not need to own every new venture. Instead, it can enable an ecosystem of specialised companies to emerge around it, creating employment, capability and confidence within a region previously associated with industrial decline. Its success becomes a platform for other people’s success.
There are tensions in this model. Employee ownership can become difficult as an organisation grows internationally. Reinvesting most profits requires trust and patience. Remaining independent may restrict access to large pools of external capital. A century-scale vision can become complacent unless it is matched by urgency, experimentation and global ambition.
Dewesoft’s results suggest that these tensions can be managed. Its patience does not mean moving slowly; it gives the company the confidence to invest boldly. Its regional loyalty does not make it parochial; it competes globally. Employee ownership does not eliminate commercial discipline; it intensifies the connection between decisions and consequences.
Dewesoft therefore offers a powerful alternative to the dominant innovation story. It demonstrates that a technology company can be globally ambitious without abandoning its origins, innovative without relying on venture capital and profitable without making shareholder extraction its primary purpose.
Its deepest innovation lies not in a single product but in the coherence of its system: proprietary technology, integrated manufacturing, patient capital, employee ownership, ecosystem development and a 100-year horizon. Dewesoft is creating value through what it produces—but also through what its employees, its community and the company itself can become.