LineWise (YC X25), the Thai-founded artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual engineer for manufacturers, has raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding from A2D Ventures, Y Combinator, Exitfund, REMUS Capital, SBXi Fund, and Team Ignite Ventures.
LineWise said in a statement that the funding will accelerate its aim to eliminate two of the most expensive problems in manufacturing: unplanned downtime and yield loss caused by defects.
With this investment, the firm will expand across North America and Asia, scale its AI engineering team, and deepen support for defect prevention and troubleshooting — starting with can-making and packaging lines.
The company aims to become the industrial AI backbone for manufacturers navigating Industry 4.0.
“Every minute of uptime and every defect-free unit matters,
“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,” said James Kujareevanich, Chief Executive Officer of LineWise.
It is noted that factory stoppages can cost manufacturers over $100,000 per hour, with cascading effects across production and supply chains.
At the same time, defective output on high-speed lines — such as can makers and packagers—creates massive hidden costs.
Wrinkles, leakers, false seams, and misfeeds not only waste materials but also strain downstream processes and force costly rework.
LineWise addresses both challenges by acting as a 24/7 AI engineer.
Its multi-agent AI system is trained to think like seasoned process and maintenance engineers, ingesting sensor data,
event logs, OEM manuals, and past fixes to provide rapid root-cause analysis and step-by-step defect troubleshooting guidance.
The result: fewer line stoppages, faster recovery from issues like leaks or false seams, reduced rework, and higher yields — without waiting for senior engineers to manually sift through records.
“LineWise is solving two of the biggest hidden costs in the global economy: downtime and yield loss,
“Their AI-powered virtual engineer delivers immediate return of investment (ROI) by helping factories troubleshoot defects faster, prevent rework, and keep production online,” said Ankit Upadhyay, Founder and General Partner at A2D Ventures.
LineWise’s founding team includes Tanachart (James) Kujareevanich, Chief Executive Officer, former McKinsey consultant with deep experience in fragile production systems; Zhichu Ren, Chief Technology Officer who developed autonomous robotics for materials research; Wenbo Zhang, Chief Product Officer, former founding engineer at Greyscale AI and Bestmow, with a patent in industrial automation.
Together, the founding teams bring technical rigor, operational expertise, and robotics know-how–building the right mix to tackle downtime and defects with AI, said the statement.