Zentio Secures €1.4M for AI Production Planning
Zentio founder team (left to right): Immo Polewka (CCO), Christophe Kafrouni (CTO), Julian Rose (CEO) - © Zentio
Berlin-based startup Zentio has raised €1.4 million in pre-seed funding to advance its AI-powered production planning platform for manufacturing companies. The round was led by High Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), with participation from SIVentures, according to a company press release.
Zentio's platform addresses a critical challenge in European manufacturing: the complexity of daily operational decisions. From shift scheduling to machine utilization and inventory management, factories face thousands of interconnected choices that create ripple effects across entire value chains. Traditional tools like Excel and legacy systems struggle to simulate these scenarios in real time, leading to millions in losses from suboptimal planning, missed deadlines, and underutilized capacity.
The startup's solution uses AI agents to structure and centralize operational, machine, and production data, creating what the company describes as a self-learning system. This enables decision-makers to anticipate capacity needs weeks ahead, respond quickly to disruptions like machine breakdowns or material shortages, and adjust operations in real time to maximize output while minimizing downtime.
"Our vision is to elevate the standard of decision-making in European manufacturing," says Immo Polewka, co-founder and CCO at Zentio. "By combining operational data with mathematical optimization and agentic automation, companies can plan ahead strategically and respond to disruptions with confidence."
The funding will support team expansion and technology development, particularly in machine learning pipelines, mathematical optimization, and agent-based automation. Zentio, founded in 2025 by Julian Rose, Immo Polewka, and Christophe Kafrouni, is currently working with pilot customers and strategic partners across Europe.
Hendryk Hosemann, Senior Investment Manager at HTGF, notes that Zentio transforms "messy ERP, MES and spreadsheet data into an AI-native planning layer that factories can trust."
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