It's an uncomfortable truth, but the hype of Industrie 4.0 failed to reach its potential.
In the 2010s, IoT was my beat as a journalist. I wrote at length about the promise and opportunity of Industrie 4.0, especially in manufacturing. Yet, it didn't wholly lead to the predicted success. Despite the promises of data-driven benefits such as predictive maintenance, it suffered from high costs, (some) insecure tech, integration complexity and, of course, the infamous IT/OT divide.
Smart factories may have created a wealth of data, but it is often unstructured and resides in silos rather than leading to actionable insights.
According to Jakub Szlaur, CEO and founder of Czech startup Edmund, "Predictive maintenance was a buzzword" with limited success in large, custom-built environments.
"A manufacturing line that costs 40 million euros is built by 50 people on-site. Predictive maintenance for this kind of technology is basically impossible."
"If you ask any manufacturing CEO or technician if predictive maintenance helped them, they'll say: 'I don't know.'
"Even fully automated manufacturing lines can have 20 downtimes or failures per day. Automation doesn't eliminate breakdowns—it just makes systems more complex."
Why am I mentioning all of this?
Industry's perfect storm
Manufacturing is facing a perfect storm thanks to increasingly complex machinery and production lines, overwhelming amounts of data, and a growing shortage of skilled technicians.
This disconnect between human capabilities and machine complexity creates operational efficiency bottlenecks across industries.
Edmund specialises in AI solutions for manufacturing. It has closed a €500,000 pre-seed round for its AI-powered platform, which combines large language models with industry expertise.
From student project to industry game-changer
Edmund was founded in 2023 by two engineering students, Jakub Szlaur and Benjamin Przeczek, and experienced project manager Miroslav Marek.
While studying, Jakub and Benjamin worked on real-world engineering projects at Ostrava's student hub. The idea for Edmund came during a sleepless night while Jakub was cramming for finals - he realised how LLMs could simplify complex technical problems. By the end of 2023, they had an MVP and a lucky break: an investor from Czech Founders VC, Ondřej Smikal, heard about them from his mother, a teacher at Batia University in Zlín. She'd seen their presentation and immediately told her son, "Ondřej, call these guys. They seem pretty cool."
Since then, they've joined the Sherpa accelerator at Czech Founders and landed their first customers — all before fully launching their product.
One interface, endless Insights: How Edmund transforms industrial data
According to Szlaur:
"One of the biggest problems we see in the industry is data incompatibility. Operators, technicians, and maintenance workers have tens to hundreds of different systems connected together, with many interfaces they need to access to learn even the smallest information."
Edmund solves this by creating data parsers that pass unstructured data to AI, making it accessible through a single interface:
"We are creating these data pipelines that enable large language models to understand industry-specific data... so you have only one interface in your phone to your whole company."
By integrating real-time data, technical documentation, and control software, Edmund provides actionable insights directly to engineers and technicians, cutting troubleshooting times from days to minutes.
Significantly, unlike competitors such as Siemens Copilot, which are limited to their own proprietary systems, Edmund is universally compatible and can process diverse data formats from various manufacturers.
The platform also boasts more rapid onboarding, processing company data in just 24 hours to deliver an MVP-ready solution tailored to specific client needs.
Szlaur asserts:
"We're not just aggregating data - we're transforming it into meaningful, actionable insights that technicians can use immediately to solve problems.
Manufacturing may look automated on the surface, but beneath that shiny exterior lies a chaotic complexity that Edmund is uniquely equipped to handle."
According to Szlauer, the reality of the industry is that "the guy with the screwdriver is your most precious asset... If a machine breaks, somebody has to go there and repair it. It doesn't matter how many reports, charts, data, AI, digital things, predictive maintenance you have—if the machinery stops, all that goes out the window."
Edmund provides technicians with direct and simplified access to critical machine data instead of overwhelming them with unnecessary analytics.
The skills shortage is set to widen
Industry reports suggest nearly 50 per cent of Europe's engineers are expected to retire in the next 5-10 years, leaving a critical skills gap.
Edmund stands out is that the startup is led by engineers who work in manufacturing, as opposed to programmers.
Szlauer shared:
"We see the demographic change in Europe. Each year, 200 IT students graduate, but only two actually go into industrial tech. Nobody wants to do it. It's a hard job."
He notes that experienced technicians are aging, while younger workers expect modern tools and home-office options.
"New technicians don't even use Google—they use ChatGPT. They expect AI-driven tools."
Szlauer is humble about his success, sharing, asserts: "I am not a startup guy... I'm lucky investors gave me half a million euros, but I am an engineer. And so are all the good people working at this."
He attributes their success to spending 12 months working directly with customers to identify real-world problems rather than pushing generic software solutions.
"It boiled down to really simple use cases. But the big software providers are creating more problems—more data, more complexity.
Further, the demand for in-house teams who understand how machines work will only increase.
"This is where Edmund will shine—when you use Edmund, it learns with you. So even when older engineers retire, the knowledge stays inside the system."
Rapid industry traction
Edmund already signed four paying customers, including industry leaders Festo and Vitesco Technologies, and have over 20 PoCs and demos running in Czechia and Slovakia. With funding secured, they're going to expand beyond Central Europe and explore a larger seed round in 2026.
Lighthouse Ventures led the funding with Czech Founders VC, Borovicka Capital, and deeptech investor Tensor Ventures joining.
According to Michal Zálešák, Managing Partner at LightHouse Ventures, Edmund combines artificial intelligence with practical expertise, delivering a solution that, thanks to its versatility and rapid deployment, has the potential to succeed not only in Europe but also in the US.
"Within its first year, it has already gained the trust of key European industrial players. It has all the prerequisites to become a global leader in maintenance."
The €500,000 raised will be directed toward finalising core features of Edmund, expanding into US and international markets, and scaling Edmund's team.
In the next 6-12 months, Edmund aims to expand beyond Central Europe, targeting partnerships with global manufacturing leaders. The company is also exploring the possibility of a larger Seed round in 2026 to further accelerate growth and development.
Image: Edmund founders (L-R): Jakub Szlaur (co-founder and CEO), Miroslav Marek (co-founder and CSO), Benjamin Przeczek (co-founder and COO). Photo: uncredited.
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