RIIICO Secures $5 Million in Seed Funding to Digitalize Established Factories

AI-powered factory design software helps industrial companies convert existing facilities faster, while making them more resilient 

– $5 million in seed funding for scaling AI-based factory design software
– Retrofitting established factories rather than constructing new ones
– Four times faster redesign of industrial environments thanks to flexible 3D models
– Pioneer: First startup ever to win Siemens Inventor of the Year award

Düsseldorf, June 12, 2025 – RIIICO, a German deeptech startup, has raised $5 million in seed funding. RIIICO develops an AI-based software platform that enables industrial companies to digitally model, redesign, and quickly adapt their established factories (brownfields) to new products or processes. The aim is to make production sites more efficient, agile, and resilient. The round is led by PropTech fund Pi Labs. Additional investors are seed + speed Ventures, WaVe-X, Earlybird Venture Capital, and Volvo Cars Tech Fund. 

Global competition is forcing Western industries to rethink: while new overseas competitors build modern greenfield plants from scratch, established Western manufacturers must upgrade their complex existing sites, often during ongoing operations. This task is costly, slow, and error-prone.

Drag&Drop factory design

RIIICO’s solution makes retrofitting factories much more efficient: a collaborative decision-making tool for all parties, from plant managers to suppliers. This makes redesigning processes four times faster and significantly speeds up the launch of new products. What makes the difference is RIIICO’s AI. It automatically detects machines, equipment, and building infrastructures in LiDAR scans and generates a precise 3D digital twin of the factory. This allows teams to simulate, assess, and implement different scenarios quickly and securely, like building with LEGO bricks.

Adapting existing production lines: The E-Mobility Example

Last year the solution was successfully used in the automotive industry to install electric vehicle production lines in factories previously used for combustion engines – a pinnacle challenge in factory design. Teams using RIIICO’s solution had access to realistic 3D data, reducing costly on-site revisions while setting a new benchmark for quality and efficiency. 

With the fresh capital, RIIICO will expand its AI platform with new applications for utilizing digital twins, helping to enhance the resilience and competitiveness of its industrial clients.

Felix Fink, CEO RIIICO: “With our lead users in the automotive sector, we’ve already proven the value of our solution under extreme cost pressures and high-quality demands. With our new investors, spearheaded by Lead Investor Pi Labs, we aim to enhance the connection between real factory environments and digital models, boosting flexibility to strengthen industry resilience and competitiveness.”

Faisal Butt, founder and managing partner at Pi Labs: “RIIICO has the potential to use AI to transform how factories redesign manufacturing facilities in response to business demands and shifting market conditions. The platform converts LiDAR scans of complex production environments into collaborative, predictive 3D models using proprietary deep learning algorithms. RIIICO is uniquely positioned to become a critical enabler for industrial facilities under increasing cost pressure, helping them operate more efficiently and competitively.” 

About Pi Labs: Pi Labs is an early-stage venture capital firm based in London backing founders who are creating the sustainable cities of the future.​The firm has made over 90 investments since 2015, across 15 countries, from over three funds, and has delivered 17 exits.​ Pi Labs’ portfolio of globally scalable startups are transforming the built world by building a digital, sustainable future, fit for generations to come. ​For more information, visit: pilabs.vc.

About RIIICO: Founded in 2021 by Patrick Mertens, Jan Büchsenschütz and Felix Fink at RWTH Aachen University, RIIICO GmbH develops intelligent 3D planning software that helps manufacturers adapt quickly to an increasingly complex industrial environment. In turbulent times, RIIICO believes that every manufacturing business should be able to respond quickly and accurately to challenges. RIIICO’s browser-based platform uses proprietary AI models to automatically create 3D images of manufacturing environments – enabling engineering, operations and supply chain teams to visualize, design and optimize production lines together, in real time and on a shared data foundation. RIIICO is supported by renowned investors, angels and industry partners.   

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RIIICO’s solution for the industry – background and equity story

Established manufacturers are at a crossroads. Their global market leadership is at risk. New competitors are entering their markets building modern production lines more quickly and cost-effectively than they can adapt their existing ones.

The reason: existing factories (so-called brownfield factories) are filled with complex machinery and equipment. Especially in urban areas, physical expansion is rarely possible due to space and regulatory constraints. As product cycles accelerate, the complexity of the factory floor increases, making it ever more difficult to compete with overseas manufacturers who build entirely new plants literally on open land (i.e., greenfield).

Yet more and more companies are acknowledging the need for change. Since its founding in 2021, RIIICO has been working with these early adopters to develop AI-based solutions for flexible factory design.

Proven use cases of RIIICO‘s solution range from the commissioning of new automation systems to the integration of new products into ongoing production. The latter is comparable to open-heart surgery and is only possible because RIIICO combines automatically generated, highly realistic 3D objects across systems. The strategic value of RIIICO‘s platform lies in its ability to provide all factory stakeholders with access to the same shared design foundation. It builds a bridge between executives, engineers, and suppliers, allowing strategic decisions to be made not in meeting rooms, but within the digital reality of the factory itself. This way RIIICO‘s approach strengthens operational resilience and helps manufacturers to buck the trend.

Press Contact

Jan Büchsenschütz

+49 157 56175547

press@riiico.com