AVIAN, a Zurich-based industrial AI company building 24/7 thermal monitoring for high-risk operations, has raised a €2.2 million ($2.6 million) pre-Seed round, led by Founderful.
The company was profitable and entirely bootstrapped for two years before raising capital. With this round, it plans to expand engineering and deployment capacity and scale beyond its stronghold in wood products into recycling, chemical processing, oil and gas, and maritime. AVIAN is on track to surpass $1 million in ARR in 2026.
“Most operators don’t need another camera. At 3 a.m., they need to know that a bearing is running hot before it ignites the dust around it. We bootstrapped the business for two years because we wanted to build something operators actually trusted. We raised with Founderful for one reason: to keep doing that, in more markets, faster, without changing what we are. We spent zero minutes on a deck,” said Drew Hanover, co-founder and CTO of AVIAN.
Founded in 2023 by Hanover and Thomas Laengle, AVIAN deploys off-the-shelf AI systems to help predict and prevent fire disasters in the paper, wood, recycling, food and gas factories. It detects temperature anomalies, cleanliness levels, reduces machine downtime and enables access to insurance with better premiums.
The company was founded after one of Switzerland’s largest sawmills saw Hanover’s robotics and AI research in the Swiss media and reached out about escalating fires, downtime, and rising insurance pressure.
The company notes that its end-to-end platform includes infrared camera hardware, anomaly detection, smart alarms, predictive maintenance reports, a notification engine, and human support.
The company states that industrial operators in Europe and North America face a challenge they can’t resolve through inspections alone. Fine dust, friction, electrical issues, and ageing machinery are pushing fire and downtime risk into territory that insurers will no longer underwrite at viable premiums. Sites deemed insurable five years ago are now considered too risky.
It further notes that the old approach to thermal safety still looks like periodic thermography, a technician walking the floor with a handheld camera once a quarter. That method misses the window that matters: the hours when a component starts running hot before it fails. Most thermal vendors also only provide the hardware, selling a camera and leaving operators responsible for setup, monitoring, and escalation, says AVIAN.
The Swiss startup claims to take a different approach: the sensor is one component of solving the problem, not the product. Customers are typically up and running in minutes, not months.
AVIAN states that it is built to run as an always-on reliability layer. Its thermal cameras continuously monitor the critical components that most often become ignition points, such as motors, bearings, conveyors, presses, and electrical cabinets, and learn what “normal” looks like in that specific plant.
“From there, the system focuses on drift, the early heat patterns that show up before failure. Smart alarms filter out routine heat sources so teams aren’t chasing noise, and alerts go to the right people with enough lead time to intervene before a hot component turns into downtime or fire,” mentioned the company.
The company also generates automated predictive maintenance reports and backs the platform with 24/7 human support. Each alarm event is analysed and incorporated into the models, enhancing detection performance across the fleet. Consequently, new sites benefit from the insights AVIAN has already gained in the field.
The company reports that in the past two years, it has saved over $50 million by preventing fires and equipment failures. It is currently active at around 50 sites across 9 countries. Kamps Pallet cut its yearly insurance costs by 10% at its Dillwyn sawmill after implementing AVIAN’s system. Sierra Pacific Industries has prevented more than 24 hours of unplanned downtime at its Quincy site in the past year alone. Schilliger Holz has used AVIAN to avoid fires and minimise unscheduled stops.
AVIAN’s roadmap splits into two tracks. First, the company’s growing camera fleet is positioned to produce real-time, site-level risk assessments backed by live thermal telemetry. Second, AVIAN Vision extends the platform beyond thermal by upgrading existing CCTV systems to detect smoke and fire.
Source: EU-Startups
