This London Startup Just Raised $11M to Fix the Spare Parts Industry

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-30

The spare parts industry doesn't get a lot of headlines. It's not flashy, it's not glamorous, and most people never think about it until something breaks. But here's the thing: without spare parts, nothing keeps running. Not your car, not the machines in factories, not the equipment hospitals depend on. That's exactly why Intropy, a London-based startup, just closed an $11 million Seed round. The company is building what it calls an "AI-native operating system" for the spare parts industry, and the investors backing it include Felix Capital, Quiet Capital, General Catalyst, and firstminute capital. ### The Problem With Spare Parts Here's what most people don't realize: the spare parts industry is still running on software that was designed decades ago. We're talking about systems that were built before the internet was a thing, before cloud computing, before AI was even a concept. The result? Companies are making critical decisions about inventory, pricing, and stock levels using spreadsheets, outdated legacy software, and a whole lot of manual work. Imagine trying to manage hundreds of thousands of individual SKUs by hand. That's what's happening every day. Franziska Kirschner, co-founder and CEO of Intropy, puts it this way: "The physical economy is sustained not only by what we build, but by our ability to keep it working. Spare parts make that possible, yet many of the industry's most important decisions still rely on fragmented systems and manual work." ### What Intropy Actually Does Founded in 2024 by Kirschner and YihKai Teh, Intropy automates the key workflows that spare parts businesses struggle with. That includes demand prediction, inventory distribution, obsolescence management, and dynamic pricing. Instead of just giving recommendations and asking employees to review them, Intropy's AI actually executes decisions directly within a customer's existing ERP system. It adjusts inventory levels, changes prices, and manages obsolescence automatically. No more waiting for someone to manually review thousands of SKUs. ### The Numbers Behind the Hype Intropy says its technology has already processed more than $10 billion in parts demand since launch. And the customers using it are seeing real results, with returns on investment exceeding 10x. That's the kind of number that gets investors excited. And it's why this Seed round happened just months after the company was founded. ### Why Now? If you've been paying attention to the news, you know that tariffs are going up, fuel and operating costs are rising, and repair volumes are uncertain. Vehicles and machines are getting more complex. The information needed to make good decisions is scattered across ERP systems, warehouse platforms, spreadsheets, images, documents, and even phone conversations. It's a mess. And it's getting worse. "Every machine made from multiple components will eventually need spare parts," says Teh, co-founder and CTO. "Whether it's a car on the road today, an autonomous vehicle of tomorrow, or a robot supporting humanity on Mars. We're building the intelligence layer that understands the extraordinary complexity of spare parts: what fits, how it performs, and when it's needed." ### What's Next for Intropy The company plans to use this funding to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and machine learning teams, and open a New York office as it grows its presence in the United States. It will also continue expanding across Europe. That's a big move. The spare parts industry might not be the sexiest sector, but it's massive. And if Intropy can deliver on its promises, it could fundamentally change how the industry operates. At the end of the day, this isn't just about making companies more efficient. It's about keeping the physical economy running. And that's something worth paying attention to.