Zentio announces a €1.4M pre-seed funding round, a key step toward realizing the company’s vision of elevating European manufacturing through AI-native production planning, automation, and intelligent decision-making.
To deliver on this, Zentio enables AI-native production planning in real time. The system structures and centralizes the full range of operational, machine, and production data through AI agents, creating a self-learning flywheel effect. This depth of data on the shopfloor level provides decision-makers with the clarity and confidence they need to run operations with greater productivity.
The round was led by HTGF – High Tech Gründerfonds, one of the most active early-stage investors in DeepTech, industrial technology, and AI-based innovation. With more than 800 investments in technology-oriented startups, HTGF brings deep industry expertise, a strong industrial and manufacturing network, and extensive experience in building scalable industrial software.
Additional support came from SIVentures, which brings deep experience in backing early-stage B2B technology startups. Together, the investors provide both strategic and operational support for Zentio’s next phase of growth.
Why Zentio?
European manufacturing is at a critical juncture. Every day, industrial companies face thousands of decisions, from small operational adjustments to major strategic shifts. Each choice creates cascading effects across the entire value chain: a change in shift scheduling affects machine utilization, which affects inventory levels, which impacts cash flow and storage costs.
The reality is that these decisions are deeply interdependent. Yet no single person or existing system can oversee and simulate all these ripple effects in real time. Companies lack the resources to constantly calculate every scenario by hand, and the costs are staggering: millions lost to suboptimal planning, reduced productivity, excessive capital tied up in inventory, missed delivery deadlines, and underutilized capacity.
European manufacturers need a new approach, one that doesn’t just digitize old processes, but fundamentally transforms how decisions are made.
As Immo Polewka, co-founder and CCO at Zentio, explains, the best way to bridge this gap is by moving forward: “Our vision is to elevate the standard of decision-making in European manufacturing. By combining operational data with mathematical optimization and agentic automation, companies can plan strategically and respond to disruptions with confidence”.
This enables decision-makers to anticipate capacity needs weeks in advance, respond to machine breakdowns or material shortages with the best available options, and adjust shift schedules or machine settings in real-time to increase output and minimize idle time.
How Zentio Will Use the Funding:
Christophe Kafrouni, Co-Founder and CTO of Zentio, said: “The funding round will allow Zentio to strengthen existing partnerships and set the stage for long-term impact across European manufacturing. Our main focus for the next months is to advance our core mathematical systems and ML pipelines and tie them all together with UX and agents. To achieve this, we’re expanding our team with ambitious engineers who want to join us on our mission to build the first generation of AI-native production planning.”
Hendryk Hosemann, Senior Investment Manager at HTGF, adds: “Julian, Immo, and Chris have shown us that Excel and other legacy tools still quietly dominate much of the world. Zentio transforms chaotic ERP, MES, and spreadsheet data into an AI-native planning layer that factories can rely on. Their blend of AI-native thinking and deep manufacturing experience is exactly what we were looking for in this space, and we are proud to accompany them on this journey.”
About Zentio:
Zentio is a Berlin-based startup building an AI-powered production planning platform for manufacturing companies. Our mission is to empower factories to turn operational data into stto accelerate its vision of AI-native production planning to further enhance quality at scale. Founded by Julian Rose, Immo Polewka, and Christophe Kafrouni in 2025, Zentio is currently collaborating with a broad network of pilot customers and strategic partners across Europe to further accelerate its vision of AI-native production planning.
