Factory downtime costs the global manufacturing industry €1.21 trillion annually—a 319% increase since 2019 as supply chains grow more complex and energy prices rise. Zurich-based Cerrion raised €15.6 million ($18M) Series A led by Creandum to scale AI video agents that transform existing factory cameras into intelligent production monitors.

The funding comes amid escalating pressure on manufacturers to reduce unplanned downtime while managing rising operational costs. Traditional monitoring relies on human operators watching dozens of screens or reactive maintenance after problems occur—creating blind spots that lead to cascading failures.

Eighty percent of enterprise AI projects fail when faced with complex, unstructured technical data—wiring diagrams, maintenance manuals, and live system logs that power manufacturing and heavy industry. German AI startup Octonomy raised $20 million in seed funding to tackle this infrastructure bottleneck with agentic AI systems that understand, reason, and execute across diverse technical documentation where traditional chatbots falter.

The round, led by Macquarie Capital with participation from Capnamic, NRW.Bank, and TechVision Fund, brings Octonomy’s total funding to $25 million since its founding just 15 months ago. The company now employs 70 people across Cologne and Denver, having scaled rapidly from the growing enterprise demand for AI that actually works on complex technical processes.