In December 2025, the manufacturing intelligence startup Axion raised $37 million in a Series B funding round. The investment was led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Schneider Electric Ventures, and other existing investors.
The company is led by founder and CEO Daniel First. Axion is defining a new operational layer for the manufacturing sector: “Customer Quality Intelligence,” designed to shift quality management from reactive firefighting to proactive problem solving.
Traditional manufacturing quality processes are often bogged down by fragmented data from field sensors, telematics, and warranty claims, leading to slow response times and massive recall costs. Axion addresses this with a domain-specialized AI platform that integrates human-in-the-loop workflows. By monitoring disconnected field data sources in real-time, Axion identifies early warning signals of product defects months before they escalate, reducing root cause analysis time by an average of 85%.
The new capital will be used to expand Axion’s AI capabilities and accelerate product development for Fortune 500 clients across sectors including automotive, aerospace, medtech, and consumer electronics.
Market Signal
- Salesforce’s Vertical Ambition: Salesforce Ventures leading this round signals a strategic interest in extending CRM’s reach into the factory floor. By backing Axion, Salesforce is betting on the “Feedback Loop” between field performance and customer satisfaction, positioning Axion as the bridge between Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Service Cloud.
- The “Human-in-the-Loop” Moat: Unlike generic predictive maintenance tools, Axion’s platform is built around the “Quality Engineer.” By combining specialized algorithms with an expert-validated feedback system, it overcomes the “AI trust gap” in high-stakes industries like aerospace and medtech where deterministic results are non-negotiable.
- Manufacturing Resilience: As Western manufacturing undergoes a “proactive revival,” the cost of quality has become a primary competitive lever. Axion’s ability to turn unstructured field data into actionable design improvements creates a circular data flywheel, moving IP from a “static design” to a “continuously evolving product”.
Key Details
- Company: Axion (fka Axion Ray)
- Funding: $37M Series B
- Headquarters: New York, NY
- Lead Investor: Salesforce Ventures
- Founder: Daniel First
- Use Case: AI-powered quality intelligence and proactive issue detection for complex manufacturing
