Polysense, a Ghent-based AI startup, has closed a $10.7 million seed round led by Felix Capital to expand its inline inspection and automated process control systems for food manufacturers. Fortino Ventures, Syndicate One, and angel investors including 100IN also participated. The round is five times the size of the company's previous $2.2 million seed, which closed less than a year ago.
Polysense sells three modules, each deployable independently. Polysense Qualify performs continuous inline inspection, checking every product in real time for quality drift and foreign material. Polysense AutoControl adjusts machine settings automatically as ingredient and environmental conditions change. The Polysense Platform aggregates data from both and connects to existing PLC, SCADA, and MES systems. The interesting part is the closed-loop correction: where established players such as TOMRA Food, Bühler Group, and Cognex flag defects or sort output, Polysense feeds adjustments directly back to the machine.
The startup's 30-person team now works with clients including Agristo, Poppies Bakeries, Darta, and Fourneo Flatbreads. One major European potato processor cut peeling time by 45 percent using real-time monitoring and automated process adjustments. A bakery customer increased yield by having the system automatically control oven temperature. Kristof Lefever, owner of Fourneo Flatbreads, said the technology "works on the production floor, delivers measurable results, and helps our team make better decisions in real time."
Food and drink manufacturing accounts for 19 percent of all food waste in the European Union, according to Eurostat. Raw materials vary in moisture content and density batch to batch, but production settings often stay fixed, and by the time human inspectors catch a quality problem, product is already lost. Yarne De Munck, co-founder and chief executive, said the past twelve months moved Polysense from "early pilots to live deployments with some of the largest food manufacturers in the world."
The new funding will go toward additional production stages and expanding engineering, sales, and customer success teams. Polysense currently runs on lines across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. Angela Chou, investor at Felix Capital, cited the team's "deep technical rigour" and early deployments at major food manufacturers as the deciding factors. De Munck, chief technology officer Lucas Van Dijck, and Jarne Bogaert founded the company in 2022 after meeting as engineering students at Ghent University.
