Index Ventures backs AI manufacturing startup EthonAI in $16 million funding round

Source: Yahoo! Finance

LONDON (Reuters) - Leading venture capital firm Index Ventures has backed a $16 million funding round for EthonAI, a startup using artificial intelligence to help global-scale manufacturers make their production lines more efficient.

The company, founded by AI researchers Julian Senoner and Torbjorn Netland in 2021, uses "causal AI" models to better predict how different factors can make the manufacturing process run more smoothly.

The company counts a number of world-leading businesses among its clients, including German technology giant Siemens, Swiss chocolate maker Lindt & Spruengli, and drugmaker Roche.

EthonAI said its software had reduced the number of chocolates that Lindt had to reject at the end of the production line, providing supervisors with real-time data to allow them to spot defects and adjust processes.

EthonAI's funding round was led by Index Ventures, a that has previously invested in tech companies such as Dropbox, Meta, and Slack.

Katharina Wilhelm, the partner at Index who led the investment, said: "Factories have truly come online in the last few years, with sensors now being used to measure everything from the temperature of a boiler to the vibration of a motor. But data is only valuable if you can digest it, make sense of it, and use it to drive decisions."

EthonAI raised 15 million Swiss francs ($16.5 million) in venture capital from Index alongside venture capital firms such as General Catalyst, Earlybird, and Founderful.

($1 = 0.9116 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Martin Coulter; Editing by Kevin Liffey)