A2D Ventures backs US AI startup LineWise’s US$1.1M funding
LineWise, a US-based artificial intelligence firm creating a “virtual engineer” for manufacturers, has raised US$1.1 million in pre-seed funding.
The round saw participation from renowned accelerator Y Combinator, Southeast Asia’s angel syndicate A2D Ventures, Exitfund, REMUS Capital, SBXi Fund, and Team Ignite Ventures.
With the new capital, LineWise plans to expand its operations across North America and Asia, scale its AI engineering team, and enhance its platform’s capabilities for defect prevention and troubleshooting, with an initial focus on can-making and packaging lines.
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LineWise was founded by CEO Tanachart (James) Kujareevanich, an MIT MBA and former McKinsey consultant; CTO Zhichu Ren, an MIT PhD who developed autonomous robotics for materials research; and CPO Wenbo Zhang, an MSE in AI & Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab.
The startup’s mission is to tackle two of the most significant and costly challenges in the manufacturing sector: unplanned factory downtime and yield loss resulting from product defects.
Factory stoppages cost manufacturers upwards of US$100,000 per hour, creating significant ripple effects throughout production and supply chains. Simultaneously, defects on high-speed lines–such as wrinkles, leakers, or false seams in canning and packaging–lead to wasted materials, downstream process strain, and expensive rework.
LineWise addresses these issues with a multi-agent AI system designed to operate as a 24/7 engineer. The platform is trained to think like experienced process and maintenance engineers by ingesting vast amounts of data, including sensor readings, event logs, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) manuals, and records of past fixes.
This enables it to provide rapid root-cause analysis and step-by-step troubleshooting instructions, reducing the need to wait for senior engineers to manually analyse problems.
“Every minute of uptime and every defect-free unit matters,” said James Kujareevanich, CEO of LineWise. “With this funding, we’re scaling our platform so every factory has a 24/7 AI engineer–cutting losses, protecting yields, and freeing teams to focus on innovation instead of firefighting.”
LineWise has secured five paid pilot programmes with large manufacturers, including NASDAQ-listed industry leaders in packaging, food and beverage, and consumer electronics. It claims that early deployments have demonstrated measurable reductions in downtime and defect-related yield loss, proving a return on investment within weeks.
The startup’s long-term vision is to become the core industrial AI backbone for manufacturers adapting to Industry 4.0.
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