IPercept raises $16.5M Series A to bring CNC machine intelligence to every factory

IPercept (Stockholm) has raised $16.5 million in a Series A (approximately €14.7 million), co-led by Isogon Ventures and 2150. Existing investors Luminar Ventures, RunwayFBU, J12 Venture, and AI.Fund participated. The company makes a sensor that reads the internal state of CNC machine tools while they operate, enabling predictive maintenance without touching the machine controller or the factory's IT network.

The problem inside the machine

CNC machine tools — the precision cutting, milling, and turning equipment that manufactures virtually every other physical object — are simultaneously the most critical and least visible assets in a manufacturing facility. A CNC spindle degrading toward failure gives physical signals weeks in advance, but those signals are in micrometre-scale vibration and motion data that no existing machine-mounted sensor was designed to read at production speed.

IPercept's approach is a single device mounted on the moving part of the machine. It converts micrometre-scale motion into structured data, tracking how components are wearing, how quickly, and flagging what intervention is required before production stops. Critically, it requires no connection to the machine controller or the customer's IT network — removing the two principal barriers to factory-floor adoption.

The company spun out of KTH Royal Institute of Technology and began commercialisation in 2022. Customers now include Airbus, Bosch, and Volvo — three manufacturers for whom an unexpected CNC failure carries costs measured in hours of assembly-line downtime.

From research to scale

The technology required what Szipka describes as a new measurement principle: five years of research to develop and four years of real-world data to train. The resulting sensor package is both the product and the dataset moat — each installation contributes to a richer understanding of how specific machine types degrade under real operating conditions, making future fault prediction more precise.

Capital from the Series A will fund IPercept's US market launch, including its first local hires in North America, and continued development of the measurement technology. The US manufacturing base — aircraft, automotive, defence, and consumer electronics — represents the primary commercial opportunity; the European reference accounts with Airbus, Bosch, and Volvo provide the proof points needed to sell into that market.