Toronto AI company Maneva, founded by a former Alberta welder turned engineer, has raised a $27-million USD ($38-million CAD) Series A round for its AI intelligence software for manufacturing.
The news: Announced on June 10, the round was led by first-time Maneva investor, US Venture Partners, with USVP partner Matt Garratt joining the board. Its Series A round saw returning participation from Bling Capital and Freestyle Capital. Canadian firms Seguin Ventures and N49P, as well as Prem Kalevar, who put together an SPV for the round, also participated.
Maneva plans to use the capital to scale its presence in North America, expand into Asia, and further develop its agentic AI.
From the source: “We can plug into industrial cameras or security cameras—we’re hardware agnostic,” said CEO and Maneva founder, Rae Jeong. “It can look at specific products, the machines, the overall line … it’s something that just like a human being is able to understand the scene and act from it.”
Following the thread: Founded in 2021 by Jeong,, Maneva uses camera feeds at manufacturing facilities and factories to transmit operational data to its proprietary AI platform, which then monitors production, catches defects, flags hazards, and tracks efficiency in real time.
Maneva has raised a total of $38.4 million USD to date, and has seen early seed funding support from Bay area investors like Gokul Rajaram. The company counts customers in industries like steel and lumber manufacturing, meat processing, pharmaceuticals, and distribution.
Final thought: With obvious benefits like catching health and safety hazards and ensuring product quality, Maneva’s platform also monitors human workers, measuring productivity at the same time it monitors for safety.
While anonymized, a Maneva media kit claims the platform can increase worker productivity, resulting in up to a 10 percent increase in total output. It’s part of a bigger trend of tech being used to monitor workers with tools like remote keyloggers or the algorithmic, camera-based monitoring used at Amazon warehouses.
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Feature image courtesy Maneva.