Vienna-based Factorymaker has closed a €1.1 million pre-seed round to accelerate its AI platform for industrial construction project planning. The financing was led by Berlin-based VC 2bX and XISTA Science Ventures, with the platform already in use by industry giants including Siemens Energy, Schaeffler, and Hilti.
The big picture: Conventional factory planning is a multi-billion-euro manual quagmire. A single production layout costs an average of €70,000 and requires 100 working days. Fragmented tools and isolated workflows lead to costly errors, making it impossible for European manufacturers to keep pace with shifting production demands.
How it works:
- Design Agents: Replaces weeks of manual work by evaluating and ranking 100,000 design variants in minutes.
- Multi-Criteria Assessment: Each variant is automatically assessed for construction cost, workflow efficiency, and environmental impact.
- Measured Impact: Customers report an 82% reduction in planning time and 21% lower construction costs through optimized layout variants.
The catch: While Factorymaker offers a massive speed advantage, industrial facility planning is a high-stakes environment where a 1% error in a digital model can lead to millions in real-world rework. Much like the challenges in construction robots, the transition from a research-led spinoff (TU Wien) to a commercial standard requires proving that its “design agents” can handle the messy, non-standardized realities of brownfield modifications. Furthermore, Factorymaker must defend its territory against legacy CAD giants who are rapidly integrating generative features to protect their established enterprise monopolies.
Key Details
- Funding: €1.1M (Pre-Seed)
- Lead: 2bX, XISTA Science Ventures
- CEO: Dr. Julia Reisinger
- Sector: ConTech / Industrial Automation
