With factory downtime up 319%, Cerrion secures €15.6 million to scale its AI video-agent platform

Zurich-based Cerrion, an AI video agent platform that detects and resolves production line issues in real time, has raised €15.6 million ($18 million) in Series A funding to further expand and scale operations in the US and Europe.

The round was led by leading early-stage venture firm, Creandum, with participation from existing investors Y Combinator, Goat Capital (Justin Kan, Founder of Twitch), 10x Founders and Session VC.  Prominent angels include Harry Stebbings (20VC), Oskar Hjertonsson, Thomas Wolf (Founder of Hugging Face), Garret Langley (Founder of Flock Safety), Filip Kaliszan (Founder of Verkada) and Marc Maurer (ex-CEO of On Running), and Carl Rivera (Chief Design Officer of Shopify).

Karim Saleh, co-founder and CEO of Cerrion says: “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. This funding not only allows us to reach and help more manufacturers, but also reaffirm our reputation as the team at the forefront of the journey towards smarter, AI-driven manufacturing processes.”

Cerrion’s Series A arrives amid a steady flow of 2025 European funding rounds in AI-driven manufacturing and adjacent industrial-vision technologies.

Other activity includes Helsinki-based CloEE, which secured €520k to scale its AI-enabled discrete-manufacturing platform; Paris’ Bonx, which raised €7.3 million to advance an AI ERP system for mid-sized factories; Berlin-based CERPRO, which collected around €2 million to build industrial QA software; and London’s Intelex Vision, which raised €6.6 million for AI video-analytics tools.

Together, these funding events amount to roughly €16.4 million across the sector, rising to about €31.9 million when including Cerrion’s round. While most announcements remain at early-stage scale, they indicate a broader European shift toward specialised AI applications within manufacturing – an area EU-Startups has highlighted in its analysis of Europe’s “quiet AI advantage” in domain-specific innovation.

Cerrion was founded by Karim Saleh and Nikolay Kobyshev in 2021. Saleh is the ex-Captain of Egypt’s national Water Polo team who went on to build Unicorn Labs to help startups launch their MVPs. Kobyshev is the serial entrepreneur behind Assaia, the AI platform now deployed across 40 airports worldwide.

Cerrion builds video AI agents for the manufacturing industry, and their technology is already being deployed across three continents and fifteen countries.

According to data provided by the company, factory downtime costs the global manufacturing industry €1.21 trillion ($1.4 trillion) each year, and with rising energy prices and supply chains growing more complex, industry downtime costs have increased 319% since 2019.

Cerrion looks to address this challenge by supporting factory workers with AI video agents that monitor what they can’t see. These agents support and empower human operators to detect and respond to process issues, quality disruptions, and safety risks in real time, triggering alerts, slowing or stopping machines, and updating relevant personnel instantly.

This combination of autonomous intervention and human partnership allegedly enables manufacturers to address problems up to 50% faster, cutting downtime and scrap losses in half.

Hanel Baveja, Partner at Creandum (who led the investment into Cerrion) adds: “Manufacturing is one of the few major industries where we haven’t yet seen AI deliver transformational value until now. Cerrion has built a product that works immediately within existing production environments – giving operators real-time intelligence and insights they’ve never had before. This is the kind of real-world AI application that has the potential to transform a $20 trillion industry.”

The company’s revenue has grown tenfold since 2024, driven by strong demand from US manufacturers, coupled with consistent demand and adoption across Europe and Latin America.

Cerrion is already deployed in live production environments at manufacturers including Unilever, Riedel, Schott Zwiesel, Stölzle Lausitz, Sisecam, and Verallia across glass, food, timber, and CPG industries – manufacturers that supply products to major global brands like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, and Novartis.

The company, which established an engineering team from ETH Zurich, Google, and EPFL, plans to use this funding to double its headcount in Europe and the US, and expand the platform beyond vision.

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