Milan-based Cyberwave secures €7 million to simplify AI-driven automation

Cyberwave, a Milan-based startup developing an operating layer that connects AI agents with real-world machines, has raised €7 million in a funding round led by United Ventures, with participation from The TechShop, Vento (Exor), Pi Campus, and several angel investors. The funding comes ahead of the company’s official platform launch in October 2025 and will help expand its developer ecosystem and validate early use cases across manufacturing, logistics, and inspections.

Founded in 2025 by serial entrepreneurs Simone Di Somma (Askdata, acquired by SAP) and Vittorio Banfi (Botsociety), Cyberwave aims to make automation more accessible by abstracting the complexity of physical hardware. The platform converts robots, sensors, and machines into programmable digital twins that can be controlled with just a few lines of code.

Deploying AI into physical environments remains a challenge for most industries. Each robot or sensor often comes with its own technical specifications and APIs, making integration slow and costly. As a result, system integrators play a dominant role, limiting flexibility and increasing costs. According to McKinsey, around 30% of manufacturing tasks still rely on manual labour due to integration difficulties, while Bain forecasts an 8 million global shortage of manufacturing workers by 2030.

Cyberwave’s platform seeks to address these issues by enabling developers to simulate, control, and orchestrate machines more easily. Its focus on usability sets it apart from competitors, drawing parallels to how GitHub simplified developer collaboration or Hugging Face made AI models more accessible.

Simone Di Somma, co-founder and CEO of Cyberwave, said: “Our goal is to bring the speed of digital software to the physical world. We want developers to treat machines the way they treat code. Flexible, composable, and programmable. Just as SAP became the system of record for digital processes, Cyberwave is building the ‘system of actions’ for the physical world.”

He added, “Real automation has so far eluded manufacturing. Today’s systems are rigid, over-engineered, and costly to reprogram, which is why 76% of mid-market manufacturers still struggle to adopt automation at scale. Each change means downtime, integration headaches, and inflexible factories. Cyberwave helps overcome these bottlenecks. Just as small teams can build digital products in days, we want small teams to reconfigure physical production with the same speed and creativity.”

At the centre of Cyberwave’s platform is a growing catalogue of digital twins that operates as a two-sided marketplace. Hardware manufacturers can integrate their devices once, making them accessible to developers through the platform. Developers, in turn, gain access to a plug-and-play library of robotic systems, from industrial arms to drones and sensors.

The company’s early pilot projects include collaborations with major European manufacturers in the automotive, construction, and logistics sectors. Use cases range from defect rework in assembly lines and logistics optimisation to drone inspections and construction site monitoring. The technology also shows potential in defence, where rapid reconfiguration of physical systems is key for flexible production.

Massimiliano Magrini, Founder and Managing Partner at United Ventures, said: “Simone and Vittorio combine technical excellence, product vision, and company-building experience. With Cyberwave, they are tackling AI and robotics with a developer-first approach, focused on making robots useful and easy to use. We believe their mission and team give them the potential to build a category leader.”

Aurelio Mezzotero, Founder and Managing Partner at The TechShop, added: “Cyberwave is embracing the same philosophy that made Salesforce and Workday leaders in their fields: true transformation comes from simplifying integration. Their customer-centric engineering approach will be instrumental in converting manual workflows into intelligent automation, and in building proprietary data foundations for strong customer retention and scalable growth.”

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