A2D Ventures, Y Combinator, Exitfund, REMUS Capital, SBXi Fund, and Team Ignite Ventures have contributed $1.1 million to the pre-seed funding round for LineWise (YC X25), a Thai startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to power virtual engineers for manufacturers.
According to a statement from LineWise, the funding will expedite the company’s goal of eradicating unscheduled downtime and defect-driven yield loss, two of the costliest issues in manufacturing.
Beginning with can-making and packaging lines, the company will use this investment to scale its AI engineering team, expand throughout North America and Asia, and improve support for defect prevention and troubleshooting.
In order to help manufacturers navigate Industry 4.0, the company wants to become the industrial AI backbone.
“Every minute of uptime and every defect-free unit matters,
“With this funding, we’re scaling our platform so every factory has a 24/7 AI engineer—cutting losses, protecting yields, and freeing teams to focus on innovation instead of firefighting,” said James Kujareevanich, Chief Executive Officer of LineWise.
Manufacturers may lose more than $100,000 per hour as a result of factory stoppages, which can have a ripple effect on supply chains and production.
Defective output on high-speed lines, like those used by can manufacturers and packagers, also results in significant hidden costs.
In addition to wasting materials, wrinkles, leaks, false seams, and misfeeds put stress on downstream operations and necessitate expensive rework.
By serving as a round-the-clock AI engineer, LineWise tackles both issues.
In order to provide quick root-cause analysis and detailed defect troubleshooting instructions, its multi-agent AI system is trained to think like seasoned process and maintenance engineers. It does this by ingesting sensor data, event logs, OEM manuals, and previous fixes.
Reduced rework, quicker recovery from problems like leaks or false seams, fewer line stoppages, and increased yields are the outcomes—all without having to wait for senior engineers to go through records by hand.
“LineWise is solving two of the biggest hidden costs in the global economy: downtime and yield loss,
“Their AI-powered virtual engineer delivers immediate return of investment (ROI) by helping factories troubleshoot defects faster, prevent rework, and keep production online,” said Ankit Upadhyay, Founder and General Partner at A2D Ventures.
Wenbo Zhang, the Chief Product Officer, is a former founding engineer at Greyscale AI and Bestmow with a patent in industrial automation; Zhichu Ren, the Chief Technology Officer, created autonomous robotics for materials research; and Tanachart (James) Kujareevanich, the Chief Executive Officer, is a former McKinsey consultant with extensive experience in fragile production systems.
According to the statement, the founding teams work together to bring technical rigor, operational expertise, and robotics know-how—creating the ideal combination to address downtime and defects with AI.
