Portland industrial software startup shines on Inc. magazine list of region's fastest-growing companies

HighByte team in Hannover for trade fair

Photo / Courtesy of HighByte Live from northern Germany, it's John Harrington, Torey Penrod-Cambra, Jeffrey Schroeder and Carolyn Baron of HighByte outside the entrance of the Hannover Messe trade fair.

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By Renee Cordes

Out of 154 companies deemed by Inc. magazine to make an outsized impact in the northeastern United States, Portland-based industrial software startup HighByte is the only Maine entity to make the cut.

The regional barometer, published last week, ranks companies according to the percentage of revenue growth between 2021 and 2023.

To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2021. Additionally, they must be based in the U.S., privately held, for-profit, and independent — not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies — as of Dec.31, 2023. The minimum revenue requirement is $100,000 for 2021 and $1 million for 2023.

With a two-year revenue spurt of 925%, HighByte was ranked No. 6 out of 154 companies across nine states.

The company, run by founders Tony Paine, John Harrington and Torey Penrod-Cambra, employs 40 people in total and recently moved to a larger office at 163 High St. in Portland with plans to keep growing.

“Since HighByte was founded in 2018, we’ve seen exponential demand for a solution that contextualizes data across the diverse systems within a manufacturing environment,” Penrod-Cambra, the company’s chief communications officer, told Mainebiz in an email from northern Germany, where the team was attending the Hannover Messe trade fair — one of the world’s largest.

“Especially with the proliferation of new AI tools, manufacturers need a solution that helps them make sense of all the data they have access to in order to gain valuable insights that enable them to be more efficient,” she explained.

HighByte has raised $17.2 million in equity funding to date, including a $12 million Series A round last year.

Asked what’s next for the company, Penrod-Cambra pointed to expanding the workforce as a priority.

“When we moved our office last year," she said, we chose a space that would allow us to continue to grow our workforce and offer Portland-local employees a productive and collaborative environment to work in when they choose to."

National list in progress

Every August, Inc. magazine releases its list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., and applications for this year's edition are due by April 25.

A total of 14 Maine companies made the Inc. 5000 national list in 2024.