Manufacturing firms face a massive cost burden due to poor quality. Around 20% of sales revenue is attributed to it, and it damages the reputation of the company as well. EthonAI, an industrial tech spin-off from ETH Zurich, has grabbed $6.8 million in seed funding. The investment round was co-led by German VCs Earlybird Venture Capital and La Famiglia, alongside participation from existing investors, Wingman and Acequia Capital.
ETH Zurich is a public research university in Zürich, Switzerland and has backed innovating European startups including Planted and more.
The funding will help to further develop EthonAI‘s technology and bring its products to a wider market.
“We are thrilled to have the support of Earlybird and La Famiglia as we continue to grow and expand our product platform,” said EthanAI CEO Dr. Julian Senoner. “With this funding, we can bring our tools to more manufacturers globally and invest in the development of new features such as simulation based on causal machine learning.”
Alexander Dierolf, Head of the IT Value Center Data Intelligence & Automation at Siemens SI said, “EthonAI’s tools impressed us because of their ease of use and scalability. We already use them in multiple Siemens factories in Europe and the US—and are currently scaling the EthonAI platform to other sites.”
“EthonAI’s hardware-independent and easy-to-deploy solution creates a completely new level of transparency for product quality across processes and factories,” said Earlybird Partner Dr. Andre Retterath. “Their holistic approach has the potential to revolutionise the way manufacturers manage quality and we are glad to back the team on their mission.”
La Famiglia Partner Judith Dada added, “After having looked at dozens of companies in the space, we finally got convinced that the team behind EthonAI has what it takes to win this market. We believe that EthonAI’s tools can help companies improve efficiency, reduce costs, and ultimately produce higher quality products. We are excited to be a part of the company’s journey as it continues to grow and succeed.”
Redefines quality management in manufacturing
EthonAI was founded by Torbjørn Netland, Julian Senoner and Bernhard Kratzwald in 2021 in Switzerland. The company employs 21 people, of whom 3 to 4 are female, or 14%. The founders are Austrian and Norwegian and met at ETH Zurich, and the team members are from 13 different nationalities.
By detecting, monitoring, and preventing quality losses at scale, EthonAI’s AI-powered software helps manufacturers boost performance.
EthonAI transforms how manufacturers manage quality by combining process and quality data into a single system. It helps manufacturers analyse and improve their products and processes using its advanced AI methods.
Further, the EthonAI platform also offers a suite of software tools for vision-based defect detection, process monitoring, and root cause analysis without requiring engineers to write a single line of code.
