Cerrion raises $18M to reduce factory downtime with AI video agents

Cerrion,
the Swiss-founded AI video agent platform that detects and resolves production
line issues in real time, has raised $18 million in Series A funding to further
expand and scale operations in the US and Europe. The round was led by
Creandum, with participation from existing investors Y Combinator, Goat
Capital, 10x Founders and Session VC, alongside prominent angels including
Harry Stebbings (20VC), Oskar Hjertonsson, Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face) and
Garret Langley (Flock Safety).

Factory
downtime costs the global manufacturing industry an estimated $1.4 trillion
annually, and with rising energy prices and increasingly complex supply chains,
related costs have increased 319 per cent since 2019.

Cerrion
addresses this issue with AI video agents that monitor factory operations
beyond what workers can directly observe. These agents help operators detect
and respond to process deviations, quality issues and safety risks in real
time, triggering alerts, slowing or stopping machines and notifying relevant
personnel as needed.

This
combination of automated intervention and human oversight enables manufacturers
to resolve problems up to 50 per cent faster, reducing downtime and scrap
losses by up to half.

Cerrion
is rapidly emerging as a key provider of AI-enabled automation, safety and
efficiency solutions for the manufacturing sector. Its platform is already in
use in live production at manufacturers such as Unilever, Riedel, Schott
Zwiesel, Stölzle Lausitz, Sisecam and Verallia, spanning glass, food, timber
and CPG industries that supply major global brands including Pepsi, Coca-Cola,
Pfizer and Novartis.

Customers
frequently scale quickly once the platform is deployed, often moving from
single-site pilots to company-wide rollouts within months of seeing results.

Global
manufacturers are facing mounting pressure from unplanned downtime and rising
operational costs, and the demand for solutions that tackle these challenges
has never been higher,

said
Karim Saleh, Co-founder and CEO of Cerrion.

With a
team built from talent originating at ETH Zurich, Google and EPFL, Cerrion
plans to use the new funding to double its headcount in Europe and the US and
to expand its platform beyond vision to support a wider range of manufacturing
processes and customers.