This startup raised $10 million to bring AI to old factories

Silicon Valley wants to build highly automated factories from scratch. This startup is betting connected the ones America already has.

Harmoni, which makes civilization tablets and AI package for mill floors, has raised $10 cardinal successful Series A backing led by Bessemer Venture Partners, the institution told Business Insider exclusively. It declined to disclose its valuation. Harmoni has astir 40 customers and expects to adhd different 10 this month, pinch aerospace and defense making up its largest customer segment.

The backing comes arsenic the US tries to reindustrialize aft years of offshoring. Some startups, including Hadrian and Machina Labs, are building caller factories designed to trust heavy connected robots and automation. Harmoni, by contrast, is targeting the astir 280,000 American factories filled pinch accepted machinery and workers.

"We've built this specifically to limb these guys to compete pinch these autonomous factories," cofounder David Caputo told Business Insider.

Harmoni, which was founded successful 2023, is competing successful a crowded marketplace wherever manufacturers already trust connected a patchwork of software. Companies, including MachineMetrics and Datanomix, way machines and production, while different devices way workers, instrumentality maintenance, and the steps required for circumstantial jobs.

Harmoni's transportation is that factories should not person to stitch each those systems together themselves — a problem Caputo and his cofounder, Adam Ellis, a longtime manufacturing consultant, said they many times encountered while moving pinch factories.

At the halfway of Harmoni's strategy are civilization tablets that connect magnetically to mill machines and tin link pinch instrumentality ranging from modern systems to machines built during World War II. Workers tin usage the tablets to timepiece in, propulsion up instructions, way jobs, and study problems from 1 place.

Shokoufeh Mirzaei, chair and professor of business and manufacturing engineering astatine Cal Poly Pomona, said ample companies for illustration Amazon are acold up connected automation, while galore mini and midsize US factories deficiency basal analytics and tally connected exertion that predates the internet.

"We find the mean mill is down the automation curve and they usage very old, bequest systems," Mirzaei told Business Insider. Many manufacturers are reluctant to switch costly equipment, she said, but are unfastened to retrofitting existing machines.

'Speak to the machines'

Caputo first saw really overmuch mill activity remained manual much than a decade agone aft leaving finance banking to commencement a patient that invests successful manufacturers. The first clip he walked a mill floor, he panicked.

"I retrieve stepping astir the shop level and thinking, 'Oh my God, I made a mistake,'" Caputo said. Workers were lining up to timepiece successful 1 by one, carrying USB sticks containing the programs needed to run the machines. "This can't beryllium really things are being done," he said.

After failing to find package that tied together the machines, workers, and processes connected the mill floor, Caputo teamed up pinch Ellis successful 2020 to build it themselves.

Harmoni is now adding AI to its existing system. Its caller product, HAL, uses the accusation Harmoni collects from its tablets to reply questions and return actions connected the mill floor.

Because the strategy already knows which instrumentality is running, what occupation is underway, and what happened connected erstwhile runs, workers tin inquire HAL questions without first supplying that context. A worker could inquire why a instrumentality is moving much slow than expected, show HAL to record a attraction request, aliases emblem the rumor for the adjacent operator. Caputo said that HAL allows workers to "literally speak to the machines."

WessDel, a San Jose shaper that makes precision components for aerospace and defense companies, has utilized Harmoni since 2024. Before Harmoni, workers had to statement up astatine 3 different kiosks to timepiece successful and manually participate accusation astir their machines — tasks that Jeff McKay, WessDel's vice president, said could return astir an hr of a worker's day. Now, workers tin badge successful by tapping their ID cards connected Harmoni's tablets, which besides automatically grounds instrumentality activity.

William Melek, a University of Waterloo engineering professor and head of its RoboHub, said devices for illustration Harmoni's could thief manufacturers header pinch semipermanent labour shortages. A Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute study estimates US manufacturers could request 3.8 cardinal further workers by 2033, pinch astir half of those jobs perchance going unfilled. Still, Melek said, technologies that automate parts of mill activity could besides tie pushback from unions concerned astir their effect connected jobs.

Caputo said Harmoni is designed for factories that will proceed to trust connected people, pinch the extremity of cutting repetitive administrative tasks alternatively than reducing caput count. Many of Harmoni's customers, he added, already struggle to find capable workers.

Some judge mill floors could yet beryllium staffed by humanoid robots. If that happens, Caputo said, Harmoni's strategy could coordinate them too. But he thinks that early is still a agelong measurement off.

"The exertion is conscionable not location yet," he said.

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