Production planning remains one of the less modernized parts of industrial software. In many factories, planners still have to coordinate complex production schedules while accounting for machine capacity, workforce availability, changing orders, line changeovers and delivery deadlines. Berlin-based Phantasma Labs wants to automate that process with AI.
The startup has developed a platform that can generate production plans within seconds and continuously adjust them as conditions on the factory floor change. A machine breakdown, a sudden change in demand or a delayed delivery can trigger a new production scenario without requiring planners to rebuild the entire schedule manually.
Phantasma Labs is targeting manufacturers with particularly complex operations, where thousands of variables can influence what should be produced, when it should be produced and on which machine.
The company says its technology combines reinforcement learning with graph neural networks and trains its AI in simulated environments based on digital twins. This allows the system to test different production scenarios and identify suitable schedules before applying them to real-world operations.
The startup has already tested its technology through paid pilot projects with customers in the US, Europe and Japan. Jet Venture 1 is investing €2.1 million, while another €500,000 is coming from Lighthouse Seed Fund II, bringing the total round to €2.6 million.
“Production planning is one of the least modernized areas of industrial software, and it keeps getting harder. Manufacturing is growing more complex, while experienced planners are becoming scarcer,”
For Jet Investment, the deal also offers an opportunity to test the technology inside its own industrial ecosystem. “Unlike many other investors, we don’t have to take this technology on faith. We own industrial manufacturing companies, so we can test and deploy this software directly in our own production operations,” Levinský adds.
That industrial connection is increasingly becoming an important part of the investment case for AI startups focused on manufacturing. Rather than building generic AI tools, companies such as Phantasma Labs are targeting specific operational problems where even small improvements in planning efficiency can have a direct impact on production capacity, costs and delivery times.
The investment is the tenth investment made by Jet Venture 1 and expands the fund’s portfolio of technologies aimed at solving concrete problems for industrial companies. Jet Investment’s recent startup investments have also included Hermetiq, a US company developing AI tools to automate software building and repair, and Czech startup Boost.space, which focuses on helping companies connect and organize their data.
With Phantasma Labs, the investment group is betting on another piece of the industrial technology stack — this time on making the factories themselves more responsive. As manufacturing becomes more complex and skilled planners become harder to find, the ability to recalculate production plans in seconds rather than hours could become an increasingly valuable competitive advantage.
