EF8 Alum Metis Labs Raises €1M Seed Round
Entrepreneur First is delighted to announce that EF8 Alum Metis Labs has raised a €1 Million Seed Round to continue their mission to transform the manufacturing industry.
We were joined in the round by lead investor Speedinvest and a strong pack of angel investors including Charles Jolley (serial entrepreneur and ex-Facebook head of platform); Steve Churchhouse (former head of Rolls-Royce Digital); and Mark Hardy (CEO of industrial systems integrator, Capula).
Most people think that industrial processes work smoothly but in reality they face daily problems relating to operational inefficiencies and low production yields. The resulting waste adds significantly to their operating costs, production capacity, and environmental footprint.
Metis Labs develops advanced machine learning software to provide a scalable solution for these problems. The company has created an intelligent application capable of adapting itself to the characteristics of any industrial production process and improving operational efficiency.
At EF we have the privilege of getting know some of the world’s most exciting founders before they start their companies — and Co-Founders Alex Appelbe (CEO) and Bashir Beikzadeh (CTO) have made rapid progress since starting Metis Labs.
They’re already working closely with selected multinational companies to deliver operational cost savings and have recently completed a commercial pilot with Procter & Gamble.
Speaking to us, CEO Alex Appelbe said “Every factory is unique, and so the best people to solve problems are the incumbent engineers with deep experience of their own operations. But industrial processes are complex, and up until now the tools available to engineers haven’t been sufficiently powerful or scalable.”
Metis Labs is changing this. By packaging powerful AI software in a user-friendly format they’re empowering factory engineers to make huge improvements to the daily efficiency of their operations, which in turn will unlock huge savings for customers.
General Partner Erik Bovee of Speedinvest who led the round said,
“Metis Labs is one of the few AI investment opportunities we see that is applying machine learning to both a very specific and very widespread industrial problem…it is one of the investment sectors that top Silicon Valley funds actively pursue in Europe, and we feel that Metis is a case study in the best kind of European technology investment.”
While Metis Labs is just getting started, the potential of the business is huge. Europe is filled with large-scale, profitable industries that are ripe for re-tooling with new technologies such as IoT and artificial intelligence. Metis Labs falls perfectly into this bracket.
This opportunity, combined with the skills and ambition of the co-founding team mean we’re very excited to see what’s next in store for Alex and Bashir at Metis Labs.
