Dutch startup Perry, a new player in the industrial AI landscape, has launched today with a mission to tackle one of Europe’s most urgent economic problems: the growing shortage of technical workers. The startup has received €1.6 million in seed funding and aims to bridge the skills gap through an AI-powered platform that delivers adaptive, easy-to-use work instructions for technicians.
The investment was led by Revent, a Berlin-based specialist fund known for backing mission-driven technology ventures, with participation from high-profile angel investors from companies including Google and OpenAI. The company develops smart documentation tools designed to ease the cognitive and practical load on technicians, helping to future-proof Europe’s workforce.
Funding to scale across Europe
The fresh capital will be used to expand the team, including hiring for key roles in AI engineering and user research, and to accelerate product development. The company also plans to expand into Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, three major markets also grappling with acute labour shortages in technical sectors.
By building tools that are as intuitive and useful for a field technician as a smartphone app is for a consumer, Perry aims to flip the script on industrial software, making it people-centric rather than process-centric.
A workforce in crisis
Perry’s launch comes amid a worsening labour crisis in Europe’s technical sectors. According to estimates cited by the company, over 15 million technical roles have vanished across Europe in the last two decades due to factors such as automation, an aging workforce, and insufficient training pipelines for younger workers. The result is a growing strain on industries critical to the continent’s future, including renewable energy, telecommunications, and construction, all of which are struggling to find and retain skilled professionals.
AI-powered work instructions
Perry was founded in March 2025 by Laurens Feenstra (formerly Google, Waymo, TomTom) and Arie Kuiper (formerly McKinsey, BuyBay). Instead of complex manuals and outdated documents, Perry offers clear, visual instructions that automatically adapt to the work situation using AI. The software also continually learns from real-world feedback. It develops its technology in close collaboration with technicians, using extensive field research and on-site testing. This ensures the product doesn’t just work in theory, but actually gets used in practice, unlike many tools designed primarily for and by management.
First customer, Van Vulpen
The startup’s vision is already being tested in the r eal world. Van Vulpen, a leading Dutch energy infrastructure company, is Perry’s first customer. The company is using the tool to train and support its workers, demonstrating the software’s value in highly practical, hands-on environments.
Initial results suggest that Perry’s system helps reduce training times and improve the consistency of technical execution key advantages in an era when senior staff are retiring and junior hires are expected to get up to speed faster than ever.
The road ahead
As Europe faces a pivotal moment in the future of its technical sectors, startups like Perry offer a rare blend of practical innovation and long-term vision. By building tools that make technical work more accessible, efficient, and human-centered, the company is addressing not only the skills gap, but also reshaping how industrial knowledge is created and shared.
With a promising customer base, top-tier backers, and a founding team that blends deep tech and business expertise, Perry is well-positioned to become a key enabler of Europe’s energy and infrastructure transition, one technician at a time.
“Getting the newest AI technology in the hands of technical workers will make a big difference. Using Perry, workers can get trained more effectively, work more safely and deliver higher quality work.” said Arie Kuiper.
“Today, many technicians don’t get much support. They often have to rely on lengthy manuals. This leads to safety risks and error costs. Due to a lack of better options, some experts get called up to a hundred times a day to help out,” said Laurens Feenstra. “Our solution makes the knowledge of experienced professionals available to everyone, exactly when it’s needed. Ultimately, we want both new and experienced workers to be supported through their tasks with live AI video calls.”
“Perry’s mission addresses an urgent societal challenge,” added Lauren Lentz, founding partner at Revent. “Without enough skilled professionals, progress in key sectors like the energy transition risks grinding to a halt.”
