Kyrok, a Berlin-based industrial AI company, has closed a €3.1 million pre-seed funding round to accelerate the development of its supply chain operating system for pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturers.
The round was led by Speedinvest, with participation from Arve Capital and a group of angel investors including Dr Marcell Vollmer, Dr André Heeg, and Dr Stephan Rohr. The funding also attracted backing from the founders of Langdock and entrepreneur Rodrigo Martinez.
Founded in 2025, Kyrok targets a fundamental pain point in European manufacturing: the reliance on fragmented, outdated systems that force workers to manually bridge technological gaps between different platforms. The startup’s operating system aims to consolidate these disconnected processes into a unified, AI-powered solution designed specifically for the complexities of regulated industries.
Addressing legacy system challenges
The company’s co-founder Daniel Hofinger articulated the problem clearly: “We visit production sites where order lists are printed out in the morning, carried into the next room and typed back into another system. The people doing this work are extraordinary, holding disjointed systems together by hand. They deserve tools from this century.”
This characterisation reflects a broader reality across European SMEs in chemicals and pharmaceuticals, where technical debt and regulatory constraints have preserved older operational models. Kyrok’s approach seeks to layer modern artificial intelligence capabilities over existing workflows rather than demand wholesale system replacements.
Plans for growth
The company intends to deploy the fresh capital towards three primary objectives: further development of its core operating system, expansion of its product capabilities, and recruitment of additional team members. This phased approach suggests the startup is moving beyond proof-of-concept validation toward broader market deployment.
The investor group’s composition indicates confidence in both the market opportunity and the founding team’s ability to execute. Speedinvest’s participation signals validation from one of Europe’s most active early-stage investment firms, while the inclusion of sector specialists and fellow founders suggests domain expertise backing the venture.
Competitive opportunity
Hofinger’s statement also hints at a secondary motivation driving the startup: European competitiveness. “Our goal is to make a concrete contribution to a competitive European SME sector,” he noted, framing the company’s mission beyond mere commercial success.
This sentiment aligns with broader European efforts to strengthen digital capabilities across industrial sectors, particularly as manufacturing consolidates and efficiency becomes increasingly important. Supply chain resilience and optimisation have emerged as critical themes for European policymakers and investors following recent disruptions.
Kyrok enters a growing segment focused on enterprise software for manufacturing, though the specific concentration on regulated industries in continental Europe remains relatively underserved by major venture-backed platforms. The startup’s success in this space may signal whether European founders can build competitive advantages in verticalised supply chain software, an area dominated internationally by larger, generalist platforms.