Matta raises $14M to develop “sentient factory” technology

London-based Matta, an industrial AI spin-out from the University of Cambridge, has raised $14M in seed funding to transform how products are designed and manufactured. The round was led by Lakestar, with participation from Giant Ventures, RedSeed VC, InMotion Ventures, 1st Kind (Peugeot family), Unruly Capital, and Boost VC, alongside grant support from Innovate UK and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

After decades of deindustrialisation, many factories are now exposed to geopolitical shocks and under pressure to deliver more with fewer resources. At the same time, energy costs are rising, supply chains remain fragile, and workforces are ageing. Manufacturers are being asked to reshore, decarbonise, and operate with fewer skilled workers. Workforce gaps and increasing operational costs are becoming common across Europe, and the US.

Matta offers a practical way to improve productivity, quality, and resilience on today’s shop floors. The company develops AI that learns the physical rules of production and applies them directly on the line. Its first product uses unsupervised and self-supervised computer vision to automate quality control and anomaly detection, perform measurements, diagnose root causes, and recommend corrective actions in real time.

A central platform allows teams to monitor every camera, analyse results, and trace parts across the factory, giving live visibility into issues and bottlenecks. Matta delivers this as a plug-and-play system that combines hardware, factory integration, AI research, and software. Most deployments become operational within hours, with cameras inspecting automatically after a short learning period.

Manufacturing still runs on human know-how, the kind that lets someone on the line kick a machine just right, or run a finger over a scratch, and say, ‘that’s thirty-four microns wide.’ We’re using AI to capture and scale that tacit knowledge, so engineers can design things that actually work in the real world. It’s time to manufacture the impossible,

explains Doug Brion, Co-founder and CEO of Matta.

Matta’s AI enables factories to monitor, analyse, and optimise their operations in real time, learning any production line within days. It detects defects, identifies root causes, and helps teams address issues before they become costly.

The technology is general-purpose and highly adaptable, operating across sectors such as electronics, automotive, defence, and apparel, and integrating with manual inspection stations, conveyor lines, and robotic systems. Beyond defect detection, Matta also collaborates with OEMs to enable machines to adjust their own settings.

The new investment will accelerate the rollout of Matta’s technology, enhance its AI capabilities, expand self-serve deployment, and support the company’s entry into key manufacturing regions in Europe and the US as it pursues increasingly autonomous, end-to-end production.