Almetra Raises $19M for Shopfloor AI Platform

Jan de Vries · 2026-06-25

Almetra, the Berlin-based manufacturing intelligence company formerly known as Deltia, just announced a $19 million Series A funding round. This cash injection is all about speeding up product development, pushing into the US market, and turning their platform into a full intelligence and automation layer for the factory floor. ### Who's Behind the Money? The round was led by Blisce, a transatlantic investor with offices in New York and Paris. Other backers include NAP, Merantix, Robin Capital, Underline Ventures, and Critical Ventures. It's a solid mix of European and American investors, which makes sense given Almetra's plans to expand stateside. ### The Problem They're Solving "Factories make everything around us, yet most of them are essentially running blind," says Maximilian Fischer, co-founder and CEO of Almetra. "Plant teams know they are losing capacity, but not where or why. We give them certainty instead of guesswork. Most of our customers find significant optimization opportunities within the first few weeks, and that is exactly the speed this industry needs right now." It's a bold claim, but one that's clearly resonating. Almetra's platform uses AI-powered cameras mounted over production lines and work areas. Raw video gets processed locally and turned into structured data like cycle times, output rates, and utilization patterns - all in real time, without needing any IT integration. ### Privacy by Design Worker privacy is baked into the system from the start. All footage is anonymized, and most video data never leaves the factory. Only short, randomized snippets are kept for root-cause analysis. That's a smart approach in an era where factory workers are understandably wary of surveillance. ### Real Customers, Real Results Founded in 2022 by Maximilian Fischer and Silviu Homoceanu, Almetra has grown to around 40 employees. Their client list includes heavy hitters like Bosch, Siemens Energy, and Aumovio (formerly Continental). These aren't small shops - they're major industrial players who wouldn't stick around if the tech didn't deliver. ### What's Next? This funding will let Almetra push into more advanced automation, including robotics in select production environments. They're already making moves in that direction, with acceptance into programs like Google DeepMind's Robotics Accelerator and the AWS, Nvidia, and MassRobotics Physical AI Fellowship. That kind of recognition shows both their long-term ambition and the strength of their AI foundation. ### The Bigger Picture Almetra's Series A is part of a much larger trend. 2026 is shaping up to be a huge year for industrial AI, manufacturing data infrastructure, and physical AI. Just look at what's happening in Germany alone: - United Manufacturing Hub (Cologne) raised $5.4 million for factory data infrastructure - SPREAD AI (Berlin) closed a $27 million Series B for industrial engineering intelligence - Sereact (Stuttgart) landed a $100 million Series B for physical AI in warehouses - NEURA Robotics (Metzingen) scored a massive $1.3 billion round for physical AI And that's just Germany. Globally, you've got companies like Trener Robotics working on industrial robot skills, Isembard building software-powered factories, Scope handling AI-enabled inspections, and THEKER deploying industrial robotics. The money is flowing into data, AI, and automation layers around industrial operations - and Germany is leading the charge. ### Why It Matters "Manufacturing is the backbone of the global economy, and the companies that give it better tools are addressing one of the largest opportunities in enterprise technology," says Sam Giber, Partner at Blisce. "Almetra has proven it can deliver measurable impact for some of the world's leading industrial companies. Maximilian, Silviu and their team have everything it takes to define this category, and we are proud to back them." For US readers, this is worth paying attention to. Almetra's expansion into the American market means we'll likely see their tech in factories here soon. And given the scale of US manufacturing, that could be a very big deal indeed.