Cerion, a 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 its operations in the U.S. and Europe. The round was led by Creandum, with participation from existing investors Y Combinator, Goat Capital, 10x Founders, and Session VC, as well as notable angels including Harry Stebbings (20VC), Oskar Hjertonsson, Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face), and Garret Langley (Flock Safety).
Factory downtime costs global manufacturing an estimated $1.4 trillion annually, and rising energy prices and increasing supply chain complexity have increased associated costs by 319% since 2019.
Cerion addresses this issue with an AI video agent that monitors factory operations beyond what employees 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 automatic intervention and human oversight allows manufacturers to resolve issues up to 50% faster, reducing downtime and scrap loss by up to half.
Cerion is rapidly emerging as a leading provider of AI-enabled automation, safety and efficiency solutions for the manufacturing sector. Its platform is already used in live production for manufacturers such as Unilever, Riedel, Schott Zwiesel, Stölzle Lausitz, Sissekam and Velaria, and spans the glass, food, wood and CPG industries supplying major global brands such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Pfizer and Novartis.
Customers often scale quickly after implementing a platform, often moving from single-site pilots to enterprise-wide deployments within months of seeing results.
Manufacturers around the world are facing increasing pressure from unplanned downtime and rising operating costs, and the demand for solutions that address these challenges has never been greater.
Karim Saleh, co-founder and CEO of Cerion, said:
With a team of talent from ETH Zurich, Google, and EPFL, Cerrion plans to use the new funding to double its headcount in Europe and the U.S. and expand its platform beyond its vision to support a broader range of manufacturing processes and customers.
