HTGF’s latest pre-seed bet, Berlin-based Zentio, underlines how fast AI-native planning is moving from pitch decks to production floors in European manufacturing.
The industrial software startup has raised EUR 1.4m in pre-seed funding, led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) with participation from SIVentures. Zentio will use the capital to scale its AI-native planning platform across European factories, targeting a long-standing weak spot in manufacturing: fragmented, Excel-driven production planning that leaves capacity and productivity on the table.
AI agents step into the planning gap
Zentio’s platform deploys AI agents to structure and orchestrate shop-floor data in real time, sitting as an intelligent layer above legacy systems such as ERP and MES. Rather than replacing those systems, it pulls data from them and from the shop floor to support:
- Real-time production planning and re-planning
- Anticipation of capacity needs
- Rapid response to disruptions
- Minimisation of idle time and throughput losses
By addressing the inefficiencies of manual tools and siloed data, Zentio aims to lift output and utilisation without major hardware investments – a value proposition that resonates strongly in a capital-intensive sector under margin pressure.
The startup, founded in 2025 and headquartered in Berlin, is already working with pilot customers and partners across Europe. Its explicit ambition is to help European industrial manufacturers reclaim and extend global leadership by making planning AI-native rather than an afterthought bolted onto legacy IT.
HTGF doubles down on industrial AI
For HTGF, a leading early-stage investor in deep tech and industrial startups in Germany and Europe, Zentio fits squarely into a growing conviction: the next wave of manufacturing efficiency will come from software intelligence, not just automation hardware.
The fund has been steadily building exposure to AI-enabled industrial solutions, and Zentio adds a focused planning layer to that portfolio. Unlike generic AI analytics tools, Zentio is positioned as a domain-specific planning engine, designed around the realities of shop-floor operations and capacity constraints.
The round’s pre-seed size – EUR 1.4m – is modest in absolute terms but firmly in the mid-market early-stage sweet spot for European industrial software. It provides enough runway for Zentio to harden its product with pilot customers, deepen integrations with existing factory systems and prove repeatable value creation before a larger seed or Series A.
A clear signal for AI-native manufacturing tools
Zentio’s raise is another data point in a clear trend: investors are shifting from broad “AI for industry” narratives to backing narrowly defined, high-impact use cases where ROI is measurable on the shop floor.
Three elements make this deal particularly indicative of where the market is heading:
- Agentic AI, not just analytics – The focus on AI agents that can structure data and drive planning decisions in real time goes beyond dashboards. It moves AI into the operational core of factories, where even small efficiency gains translate into significant financial impact.
- Layering on top of legacy systems – By integrating with Excel, ERP and MES rather than replacing them, Zentio reflects a pragmatic European approach to digitalisation: incremental, interoperable, and capex-light.
- European manufacturing as the primary beachhead – With pilot customers across Europe and a stated mission to strengthen European industrial leadership, Zentio is aligned with regional industrial policy priorities and the ongoing push for more resilient, competitive manufacturing.
Risks and execution challenges
The opportunity is clear, but so are the execution risks. Zentio must prove that its AI-native planning layer can:
- Integrate cleanly with heterogeneous factory IT stacks
- Deliver quantifiable improvements in throughput, utilisation and on-time delivery
- Be adopted by planners and operators without disrupting existing workflows
Industrial buyers are conservative and cycles are long. However, early pilots across Europe and backing from a specialist investor like HTGF mitigate some of this go-to-market risk, providing both reference customers and sector-specific support.
If Zentio translates its pilot traction into scaled deployments, the company will stand as a bellwether for a broader shift: European factories using AI agents not as experimental add-ons, but as a standard component of day-to-day production planning.
For the mid-market manufacturing segment, where resources for custom digital projects are limited, off-the-shelf AI-native planning tools like Zentio’s could become a key lever for competitiveness in the next cycle of industrial transformation.