ControlRooms.ai Secures $10M Investment to Enhance Industrial Manufacturing Troubleshooting Platform

Industrial manufacturers experience, on average, around 800 hours of unplanned downtime annually—equating to more than 15 hours each week, as highlighted in a recent report. This unexpected stoppage, estimated to cost $50 billion each year, not only hampers productivity but also leads to significant revenue losses. While many companies still rely on manual troubleshooting methods, ControlRooms.ai, a startup based in Austin, Texas, aims to revolutionize this process.

ControlRooms.ai has introduced an AI-driven analytics platform designed to automate industrial troubleshooting. Today, the startup announced it has successfully secured an oversubscribed $10 million Series A funding round, led by Origin Ventures, with contributions from Amity Ventures, Tokio Marine Future Fund, S3 Ventures, GTM Fund, Alpha Square Group, and FJ Labs. To date, the company has raised a total of $13.75 million.

Omar A. Talib, co-founder and president of ControlRooms.ai, pointed out that troubleshooting for heavy industries, such as chemical and energy plants, remains “virtually unchanged since 1980.” He stated, “Traditional alarms fail to provide specific insights into underlying issues, often resulting in lengthy and inefficient searches for errant trends. These conventional troubleshooting efforts are not only labor-intensive but also ineffective.”

ControlRooms.ai claims its turnkey troubleshooting platform enables users to start within a week without needing to change existing systems, significantly reducing downtime. The platform’s AI capabilities can predict manufacturing plant behavior, identifying potential issues before engineers or control room operators are aware.

Founded in 2021 by CEO Monte Zweben, an AI specialist and serial entrepreneur, along with Talib—who has a background in providing AI solutions for energy producers—ControlRooms.ai launched its first product last year and currently has five active customers.

“A chemical client uses ControlRooms to monitor over 10,000 asset parameters in real time, including pressure, volume, and temperature, enhancing asset health by minimizing reliability violations,” Talib explained.

Talib believes that ControlRooms.ai distinguishes itself from competitors by its focus on tailored solutions. The platform is designed specifically for process engineers, operations engineers, and supervisors in heavy industry, unlike general-purpose AI systems.

The company plans to utilize the new funding to accelerate product development and expand its market presence in the heavy industries sector, including chemical, petrochemical, energy, and materials facilities across the U.S., Asia (China, Japan, South Korea), Germany, and the Middle East.

Currently employing a team of 15 full-time members, ControlRooms.ai is engaged in extensive R&D to incorporate generative AI capabilities into its platform in the near future. “Imagine harnessing the conversational intelligence techniques of ChatGPT-4 and applying them to industrial time-series data,” said the CEO, noting that this could lead to groundbreaking predictive applications, allowing operations personnel to anticipate issues and mitigate surprises.