The investment strengthens 40Factory’s vision: building an industrial digital platform capable of integrating machine data, analytics, AI agents, and vision systems to improve efficiency, quality, and safety across production plants.
Piacenza, 8th May 2026 – 40Factory announces a strategic investment in FruitfulAI AG, a Zurich-based startup specializing in AI Machine Vision technologies applied to industrial environments.
The investment aims to integrate new capabilities into 40Factory’s Industrial IoT & AI platform, based on the intelligent analysis of video streams from industrial video surveillance cameras.
For many industrial companies, OEMs, and end users, one of today’s most significant challenges is unlocking the value of the vast amount of data generated throughout the production process. Alongside machine data, field signals, alarms, and performance indicators, there is another major source of information that remains largely underutilized: the data produced by cameras installed on production lines, shop floors, and operational areas.
By integrating FruitfulAI AG’s AI Video Intelligence technology with the Agentic AI and Industrial IoT solutions developed by 40Factory, it will become possible to transform video data into operational insights, enabling new use cases across all verticals of the manufacturing industry.
Key application areas include the optimization of production efficiency, the improvement of process and product quality, the monitoring of operating conditions, the reduction of intervention times, and the enhancement of operator safety.
“With this investment, we aim to further strengthen our Industrial IoT & AI platform by integrating a component that is becoming increasingly strategic for the future of industry: the ability to understand what happens inside the factory through AI applied to video streams,” said Camillo Ghelfi, CEO of 40Factory. “Industrial cameras generate an enormous amount of information every day, but this data often remains disconnected from analysis and decision-making systems. The combination of AI Video Intelligence, Agentic AI, and Industrial IoT opens the door to a new level of operational awareness, where the factory becomes increasingly observable, intelligent, and autonomous.”
“This partnership marks an important step in making AI-driven decision-making accessible across industrial environments. By combining FruitfulAI’s expertise in machine vision with 40Factory’s Industrial IoT and Agentic AI platform, we are enabling manufacturers to turn visual data into a strategic asset – driving smarter operations, higher quality, and safer workplaces.
The future of industry will be defined by the ability to truly understand what happens on the factory floor in real time – not just through metrics, but through what machines actually see. Together, we are helping bridge the gap toward physical AI for manufacturing, making machines more capable, efficient, and autonomous,” said Patrick Albrecht, CEO of FruitfulAI.
Following the investment, Camillo Ghelfi will also join the board of FruitfulAI AG alongside Andres Cartagena Ruiz (Investor), Patrick Albrecht (CEO), and Thomas Kleiven (CTO), contributing to the company’s strategic development and to the technological integration roadmap between the two organizations.
The investment is part of 40Factory’s growth journey. For years, the company has been developing digital solutions to connect machines, lines, and industrial plants, transforming production data into concrete tools for continuous improvement, servitization, and the evolution of business models for machine builders and manufacturing companies.
The integration with FruitfulAI AG represents a further step towards an industrial platform capable of combining different sources of information — machine data, process data, events, images, and videos — and making them available to advanced analytics systems and AI agents able to support faster, more accurate, and more contextualized decision-making.
In this round, 40Factory is subscribing the majority of the investment, while MFL Group participates as a follow-up investor after FruitfulAI AG’s Seed Round in 2025.
40Factory was supported by the investment bank Cenciarini & Co and by the legal department of GEFRAN Spa for the due diligence activities.
About 40Factory
40Factory is a leading European scale-up developing Industrial IoT and AI solutions to support machine builders and manufacturing companies in connecting, analyzing, and unlocking the value of industrial data. Through its platform, composed of MAT and Wilson.ai, 40Factory enables plant monitoring, performance analysis, advanced maintenance, servitization, and the integration of AI technologies into production processes.
About FruitfulAI AG
FruitfulAI AG develops AI-based Machine Vision technologies to transform industrial images and videos into actionable information for improving processes, quality, and safety. Its solutions make it possible to analyze images and videos from production environments, turning visual data into an integral part of industrial decision-making processes.
